Dumbledore’s Army and the Year of Darkness
by justaRANDOMGIRLofftheinternet
Summary: The story of the unsung hero’s of the second wizarding war. Follow the DA as they fight back in the darkest year Hogwarts has ever seen.
1. DISCLAIMER

Disclaimer: Not my writing, it is by Thanfiction, but as this amazing story was deleted from basically every fanfic site I'm bringing it back on here.


	2. Chapter 1: The DA Reborn

"Any witch or wizard who marries a Muggle is taking a terrible risk. The children born from such unnatural unions—" Alecto Carrow motioned with her wand towards the blackboard, the points appearing there in her heavy, scrawling handwriting as she named them off. "Can expect deformity, retardation, severe anti-social tendencies, and often a complete lack of magical ability. In addition, as Muggle females are ill-bred to handle magical children, serious complications can result in such pregnancies, leading in some cases to the death of the female. Likewise, an attempt by a witch to carry the child of a Muggle male—yes, Mr. Finnigan?"

Seamus stood, his face a study in scholarly innocence as he lowered his hand. "Please, ma'am, those anti-social tendencies, they'd be the reason You-Know-Who's so delusional, then?"

Neville felt as though his stomach had abruptly dropped into his feet. Had Finnigan lost his bloody mind? He wished it weren't too late to catch his friend's eye, to warn him off of saying something so crazily inflammatory, but the damage had been done. The words on the blackboard dissolved in smoke as Carrow's face slowly turned a deep scarlet.

"The Dark Lord carries the blood of the great Slytherin himself through generations of powerful wizarding families such as the Gaunts and the Peverells," she hissed between clenched teeth. "More than powerful enough to counteract the pitiful influence of any Muggle... if you choose to believe disgusting rumors spread by petty, small-minded, Mudblood-loving fools. But you are certainly proof that no ordinary slum-dragging witch can marry filth without consequence!"

To Neville's surprise, Seamus seemed to take the attack on his mother in stride, nodding as if her answer had been perfectly reasonable. "Then if we're to be takin' the example of the Gaunts and keepin' it all in kin, can I ask when you and Amycus'll be expecting?"

A collective gasp sounded through the classroom, and Neville slipped his hand into his pocket, closing his fingers unobtrusively around the handle of his wand. Seamus had brought whatever punishment was coming on himself, without a doubt, but if it was going to be too much, Neville was prepared to fight to save his fellow Gryffindor's life. The look on their new teacher's face certainly suggested it might come to that. Seamus, however, simply stood silently, facing her with the same look of serene curiosity on his face until the moment her wand snapped towards him.

" CRUCIO !" she shrieked, and the curse hit Seamus with such force that he flew backward over his chair, crashing into the desk behind him. Lavender Brown jumped to her feet and screamed as he slid down to the floor, his body thrashing and writhing against her legs as the agony of the curse swept through him.

At the head of the class, Carrow watched, her teeth bared in feral glee at Seamus' pain. Neville's hand grew so tight on the wand that his fingernails cut into the flesh of his palm, but he made no move, forcefully reminding himself that it was only the second day of school, too early to do anything rash or foolish.

If he made any move towards Seamus, he would join him instantly on the floor, helpless under the wracking pain of the curse he remembered all too well from the night he had faced the Death Eaters at the Ministry of Magic.

After what seemed like years, a hand appeared on the surface of Lavender's desk, and Seamus slowly pulled himself upright. He was trembling, his chin scarlet and his shirt stained with blood where he had bitten almost completely through his lower lip, but incredibly, he was smiling. "Touch a nerve, there?"

Slowly, Carrow stalked across the classroom, her squat, round-shouldered form moving with bullish intensity towards the taller student. Reaching him, she stared nastily up into his face, putting the tip of her stubby wand directly under his chin and forcing him to look upwards. "I take no disrespect from half-breed Irish dung, Finnigan." Lowering her wand, she unleashed a thick gob of spittle that hit Seamus directly in the face, then, with a quick, harsh motion, snapped the wand up again.

Before she could utter the curse, however, Seamus's own wand was in his hand, dropped out of his sleeve in a motion that seemed almost magic in itself. " Ionsaigh !" he shouted.

Carrow doubled over as if punched, beady eyes bulging in pain, and Neville gasped in shock. Silently, he urged Seamus to run, to flee, to Stupify her and get away before she could retaliate. But it was too late. Already, Carrow had recovered enough to jab her wand towards the young Gryffindor, and all Neville could do was wrap his arms around Parvati, who was sitting next to him, and hide her face in his robes so that she didn't have to watch.

"What in Merlin's name were you thinking?!" Ginny Weasley spoke for all of them the moment Seamus' eyes eased themselves open in the Gryffindor common room, barely visible as blue and white slits beneath the puffy swelling of two massive bruises.

"Izzazmple l'arridadun." The words were utterly unintelligible through the cracked and bleeding lips, and Neville knelt, raising a small bowl to his classmate's mouth.

"Here, drink this." He shot a look at Ginny. "You can wait to tell us all what possessed you once you're patched up."

"Winasplwen?" Neville tilted the bowl, and the protestation stopped as Seamus began to drink the murky green liquid.

Ignoring the faces his patient made at the taste, Neville gently wiped away a few stray dribbles from Seamus' chin, then refilled the bowl from the cauldron that sat on the low table next to the couch that was being used as a makeshift hospital bed. "You're not in the hospital wing," he explained, "because the Carrows wouldn't let us take you there. Alecto wanted you to suffer for what you've done. None of us wanted to try healing spells on you while you were unconscious, but I've brewed up a mixture of Dittany, Murtlap, and a few other things that should help a lot, and Ginny is going to give the spellwork a try for the rest—oh, don't give me that look, this isn't Potions, it's Herbology."

The swelling had already gone down by nearly half, and Neville was pleased to see that his concoction was already restoring a more normal appearance to the battered and bloody mouth, though the two front teeth were still badly broken. When Seamus spoke again, it was surprisingly clear. "I wanted to set an example like Harry. I thought if someone stood up to her straight away, folk'd see it could be done, you know?"

"What we saw, Finnigan, you ass, is an excellent alternative if poking the Whomping Willow is inconvenient!" Parvati's cheeks were flushed mahogany, but she could not entirely hide the relief in her voice. It had looked for almost two terrifying hours as though Seamus might not wake up, so badly had Carrow worked him over for his insolence, but merely having him conscious and seeing the first signs of healing had done wonders for them all.

Neville nodded towards Ginny. "You can give it a try while I add a little more tincture of Mandrake, I think."

The younger girl raised her wand, and Seamus drew back painfully into the mountain of pillows that had been piled under him. "Now wait a moment..."

"Hold still." Ginny's voice was crisp and matter-of-fact, the tone one that Neville knew without ever having spent more than a moment with Mrs. Weasley had been learned from her mother. "Do you really think I could have lived in that house with six brothers all my life and not learned a thing or two about healing spells? If we'd had to take Fred and George to St. Mungo's every time they blew themselves up, we'd have been out on the street."

Reluctantly, Seamus held still, and Ginny placed the tip of her wand against the broken teeth. " Episkey Dentata !" With a faint "pop!" the teeth regrew instantly, and Seamus tried to raise a hand to feel his mouth, but stopped mid-motion, groaning in pain.

Neville lifted his head from the cauldron where he had been carefully stirring in the Mandrake, one drop at a time, allowing his instincts to tell him when the texture was exactly right. "You have a broken wrist, a few cracked ribs, a sprained ankle, and more bruises than if you'd been used for practice by every Beater in the school. That's not to mention a knot the size of a Snitch on that thick head of yours, two black eyes, a few wand scorches, and a mouth that is just starting to look human again. I suggest you lie back and think about Gryffindors having a tendency to be brave to the point of stupidity, and then we need to talk about what you originally had in mind and make some decisions."

The tone of cool authority in his voice surprised him, and he stopped, blushing and looking back down into the green mixture. "If that's okay with everyone."

"Wow, Neville," gushed Colin Creevey, "you sounded just like Harry there for a minute! It was like the DA again!"

"Yeah, well..." Neville mumbled, embarrassed, "Harry's gone, and so is Dumbledore, and so are Ron and Hermione and Dean and Justin and another dozen from the DA, and another hundred from the school. It's not like when all we had to worry about was Umbridge and her little Squad."

"But this is why we had the DA in the first place, isn't it? Because Harry knew it might come to this?" Parvati asked, and Neville wondered hotly why everyone seemed to be looking to him, even Ginny, who seemed to him the far more natural successor to any kind of leadership in Gryffindor.

"That's true," he agreed slowly. Finally satisfied with his brew, he scooped up another bowl and began to daub it onto Seamus' wounds, using the busywork to avoid everyone's eyes as he spoke. "But I think this is worse than even Harry ever guessed it would be. I mean, Dumbledore dead, Snape in charge of the school, Death Eaters teaching classes, the Ministry under You-Know-Who... I don't think anyone could have seen this coming this fast and this completely even six months ago."

Ginny scowled up at him from where she had been using her wand on the sprained ankle. "You're not suggesting that we should just roll over?"

"Or that we let ourselves be punching bags in the style of the brilliant Mr. Finnigan, I hope," added Lavender.

"I don't know what I'm suggesting," Neville admitted. Then he looked at Seamus again, a thought occurring to him. "I've wanted to ask you, what was that hex you used on Carrow? I didn't recognize it. Is it something Harry taught you personally?"

Seamus blushed, adding an overall pink tinge to his multi-colored features. "Nah, it's not even approved. I shouldn'ta done it."

Colin's eyes widened. "It's like an Unforgivable, then?"

"Not even!" Seamus started to shake his head, then thought better of it and closed his eyes, moaning softly before he spoke again. "It's one of the old ones from my Nana—Gaelic. All the Ministry-approved spells are off of nice, proper, respectable Latin, you know, but the Celts had their own brand of magic, even if it got pushed off as all backward. It's mostly died out now, but some of the old ones still remember a bit here and there, mostly hexes and jinxes and the odd witch's charm, you know, for tellin' what kind of baby you'll be having and the like."

Parvati looked suddenly fascinated, sitting up very straight and tossing back her heavy black braid. "My grandfather was a Fakir in Bombay, he used to tell us that there was all kinds of magic we would never learn at Hogwarts—he tried to have us sent to India to learn—but when our parents refused, he taught us a few spells. Padma can even control snakes."

Ginny gasped. "She's learned Parseltongue?"

"No, she can't talk to them, only make them do what she wants."

"Great!" Seamus grinned. "Tell her to make that big one You-Know-Who's got eat him."

Parvati gave him a look of exasperation. "That'd be nice, but it's just little ones—normal ones—like cobras and adders. And I know a few French spells from one of the boys from Beauxbatons."

Excited now, Lavender leaned over the back of the couch. "Anthony Goldstein comes from a family of wizards that go all the way back to the Essene scholars, I bet he knows some stuff in Hebrew. Vane's always going on that her family are genuine Rom—those are gypsies—and Ernie's family was so deep in the Clan wars that they didn't start going to Hogwarts until a hundred and fifty years ago, so maybe he has something like Finnigan, old Gaelic magic."

"His'd be Erse , not Gaelic. We're not the same, and we whipped Scotland at Quidditch last year." Seamus pointed out defensively.

Neville and Ginny stared at one another, startled by this sudden burst of exotic spell knowledge that had broken out, and then Ginny giggled. "I don't know about you, Neville, but I feel rather plain all of a sudden."

He couldn't help grinning back. "Yeah. I mean, my family's just been, you know, wizards. Normal old British wizards. Tut tut, conjure you a cuppa?" He put down the bowl and waved his wand, summoning an empty teacup from across the room and lifting it to her in an extravagant motion, pinky broadly outstretched.

Ginny curtsied with a flourish, imitating an arch, aristocratic drawl that everyone instantly recognized as a viciously accurate exaggeration of Draco Malfoy's cultured pronunciation. "But certainly, daah-ling..."

Everyone laughed. It felt good, a warm burst of happiness and fellowship in the midst of the darkness that had closed over all of them, and Neville gave himself over to it, roaring with mirth along with everyone else until his sides ached and tears were running down his face. It seemed like a wonderful forever before it finally died away, and he wiped his cheeks with the back of one shaking hand. The others surrounding him were still beaming, and he didn't want to bring them back to earth, but the reality of their situation was as unmistakable as the bruises still yellow and green on Seamus' swollen face.

"Really—" Neville gasped. "It's good, though. I mean, Carrow didn't know what hit her, did she? She couldn't have blocked that one if she'd tried. And the Death Eaters are going to know all the usual spells. No matter how much we practice, Protego and Stupefy and Impedimenta aren't going to be enough on their own against fully-qualified Dark Wizards. You remember what Snape said about the Dark Arts. They're unpredictable. We have to be too."

Seamus frowned. "I thought you were against me fightin' back at them?"

Neville shook his head. "Not like that. We've got to think more like your brothers, Ginny. Like the twins. Mischief and little rebellions. We'll take some hits, get punished, sure; but Seamus took it too far. He nearly got himself killed on the second day of the school year over nothing at all. Beaten is fine, but no more unless the situation really calls for it." He could hardly believe the words coming out of his own mouth, and he hurried on, afraid of losing his nerve. "We keep the DA going, but just enough to get under their skin and keep the other student's hopes alive. Nothing full- fledged until it's time."

"What do you mean, until it's time?" Parvati asked.

"Well, until we have to. We all know what's coming." He thought that the realizations he had come to since Harry and the others had failed to return to the school were obvious, but seeing the expressions surrounding him, Neville came to the slow, horribly dawning understanding that perhaps he alone had been able to see what faced them. "Come on..." His voice was pleading. "Ginny, Seamus... haven't any of you figured it out?"

"I guess not," Lavender said.

Neville took a deep breath and licked his lips, uncomfortable with the spotlight he was suddenly in. Reluctantly, he held up a hand, extending four fingers. "The way I see it, things can only go four ways. One, we all become good little followers of You-Know-Who." He put down one finger. "I don't see myself doing that. Even if I could live with myself, Gran would kill me."

"Me neither, mate," Seamus agreed."

Likewise," Ginny nodded as Parvati, Colin, and Lavender all made sounds of assent.

"Two—" Neville continued, "Harry finds a way to stop You-Know-Who and end all of this clean and quick before the end of the year, all the Death Eaters get rounded up, and things go back to normal."

"I'm for that one," Colin blurted, and several people smiled and nodded.

"But I'm not putting all my gold there. It would be great—and I believe with all my heart Harry's going to get him in the end—but doing it in one year with only Ron and Hermione's help seems like a tall order."

Colin looked like he was about to argue that there was no such thing for the great Harry Potter, but Neville went on, ignoring him as he lowered another finger. "Three. We graduate, and we're not safe here any more."

"Sorry to interrupt, there," Seamus broke in, "but I don't feel so bloody safe, personally."

"Cormac is dead. Cho and Lee are in hiding. Roger is in St. Mungo's in worse shape than you, Seamus, and that's just what's in the Prophet, or what Ginny's brothers have managed to pass on in news under labels. Right now, he thinks there's still a chance to brainwash us in school, but once we're graduated, we lose the safety of numbers and the protection of being kids. He doesn't want the public outcry that would happen from a massacre at Hogwarts, but once we're out, we're on our own."

Parvati's voice was hushed. "What's four?"

He lowered the last finger. "We fight. If Harry comes back and needs us, we fight then. Personally, that's what I believe—that he can do this, but he'll need our help. It's only a matter of time before he's back, but we don't have infinite time, so on the very last day before school is over, if there's no word from Harry yet, we go all out. Either way, we make a proper battle of it. Take out every last Death Eater we can manage, hopefully Snape in the bargain. Use every exotic spell and dirty trick we can think of. Make them pay for everyone missing, everyone terrorized, everyone killed. Even the odds a little for Harry and the Order, and give the public that massacre that You-Know- Who doesn't want—get people outraged in a way the Prophet can't cover up. We still die, but we die on our terms, and we die accomplishing something, not just picked off one by one in back alleys with our deaths glossed over and ignored."

There was a long, terrible silence following his words, and Neville stared at the floor, unable to quite believe what he had just said, even though he had been thinking it for almost a week now. It had seemed like the only sensible thing to do inside his head, but when spoken, it sounded like some kind of grand, brave gesture, even something heroic. Colin was right, it did sound like something Harry would say, and the comparison made Neville deeply uncomfortable.

Finally, Ginny stood, tossing back her mane of bright red hair defiantly. "I've been looking for a way to top Fred and George on their exit," she said. "I'm in."

Seamus reached out his left hand, his right still cradled against his chest, and took Ginny's small white one. "I don't see myself winning any Death Eater popularity contests anyway, so why the hell not? I'm with you."

Parvati's hand joined the other two. "I can't speak for Padma, but count me in. I just hope my next life is something quieter."

"And me!" Colin thrust his hand out with an excitement that made Neville shiver. "What else is a Gryffindor girl to do?" Lavender's hand joined them.

Slowly, Neville placed his hand atop the cluster of others, hoping that no one would notice how badly it was shaking. "I said it, so I guess I can't back out."

"I'd hope not, Neville," Ginny's brown eyes flashed at him in the firelight. "You're our leader."

Neville gaped at her. "I'm—"

"All in favor of Neville taking over for Harry as leader of the DA?" Ginny's voice carried over his protestations, and Neville was shocked to see heads nod all around him. She grinned, showing the dazzling white smile that had laid boys all over the school, including the famous Boy Who Lived, helpless at her feet. "Then that's settled. We'll talk to the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs later, but I think as of right now, Dumbledore's Army is back."

Neville's eyes swept the faces of his friends, taking in the belief in all of their expressions, and lingering on each in turn. Bright, fiery Ginny, the last Weasley left at Hogwarts. Cool, exotic Parvati, her dark eyes utterly trusting. Tempestuous Lavender, her best friend, standing at her side more like a sister than Parvati's own twin, and just as ready to lay down her life. Colin, his expression guileless and determined, brimming with the endless bravery of the naïve. Seamus, still in so much pain, his eyes still swollen nearly shut but resolute nonetheless.

In the flickering, deceptive shadows of the firelight, it almost seemed as though other Gryffindor faces were there as well. Bushy-haired, sharp-eyed Hermione. Stalwart Ron, red hair glowing beside his sister. The twins, laughing with some secret joke, Lee Jordan beside them like a mismatched triplet. Dean, eyes and smile gleaming from his dark face. And Harry. Harry with the lightning scar that marked him as so different from the rest of them, black hair sticking out in all directions, glasses glinting over that piercing green gaze that he had always relied on to take the lead.

Neville looked at all of them, there and there in spirit alike as he nodded. "Dumbledore's Army!"


	3. Chapter 2: Being Teenagers

"Six hundred eighty one, six hundred eighty two, six hundred eighty three ..." Neville sighed and sat up, grabbing his pillow and punching at it in hopes of somehow knocking it into a shape that might be more conducive to sleep. There was nothing wrong with it, no lumps or really anything uncomfortable at all, but it gave him the feeling that he was doing something besides uselessly counting Hippogriffs. With a deep sigh, he flopped back down. "Six hundred eighty four ..."

A faint knock sounded at the door of the boys' dormitory, and Neville sat bolt upright, grabbing his wand off of the nightstand as he swung his legs off the side of the bed and parted the curtains with one hand. "Who is it?" he whispered.

"Ginny."

Letting out a sigh of relief that it wasn't Snape or the Carrows there to announce that they knew what he had done that afternoon, Neville climbed out of the bed and started towards the door. He had only made it a few steps across the pitch-black room when his toe abruptly met something painfully unyielding, and he let out a sharp yelp. Biting back the urge to yell out a few of the better swear words he had learned from his uncle, he hopped awkwardly in a circle, grabbing his foot until the worst of the throbbing stopped. Why did stubbing your toe have to hurt so much? Gingerly lowering his foot to the floor again, he held his wand out ahead of him and muttered " Lumos!" The tip ignited with the familiar blue light, and Neville was able to see that his assailant was actually what had once been his own bed. With Harry, Ron, and Dean missing, the two remaining boys in their dormitory had been moved from the third and fifth beds into the first and second, and the change had not quite registered in Neville's mental map of the tower room.

Using the wand light to avoid any more unpleasant encounters with furniture, Neville made his way across to the door and opened it. Ginny swept past him in a blur of red hair and blue and white stripes, moving so quickly that he barely stepped back in time to avoid being run into. "What took you so long?" she hissed.

"Sorry. Stubbed my toe."

She was perched cross-legged on Dean's old bed now, arms folded tightly across her chest, and as Neville shut the door and crossed towards her, he was struck suddenly by how young and tiny she looked. Her hair was in two long braids that fell forward over her shoulders, and she was almost lost in a pair of pajamas that had been rolled up a dozen times at the arms and legs, but were still at least four sizes too big for her.

Following his eyes, Ginny blushed. All of the Weasleys, he noted, did this with gusto, and the red tinge was clearly visible even in the blue cast of the wand's glow. "They were Ron's," she explained, and there was a touch of defiant embarrassment in her tone. "I usually don't get hand- me-downs from the boys, but things are ... well, Bill just got married, and we don't know how much longer Dad or the twins are going to be able to work, so—I mean, they're just pajamas."

Well aware of how touchy Ron was on the subject of his family's finances, Neville smiled gently. "They're kind of cute, really. It looks sort of like you've borrowed them from your boyfriend or something."

She snorted. "If I'd done that, I could have saved myself six inches in the arms and legs."

Neville couldn't help but smile at this as he climbed up onto the bed next to her. "You didn't come here at three in the morning to show me Ron's pajamas."

Ginny looked down, fidgeting with the turn-up on one leg. "It's stupid."

He shrugged. "I was up anyway. Couldn't sleep."

"I had a nightmare," she confessed. "I dreamed that I'd messed things up with Seamus, and his ... hisarmsandlegshadfallenoffandhewasmadatmeforit." The last part came out in a single humiliated rush, and she covered her face with both hands. "Oh, it sounds so ridiculous now that I've come all the way up here!"

Neville shook his head. "No, it doesn't. You were just worried about him. Parvati and Lavender have been up to check too. We're all worried about him. He took a hell of a beating, and none of us are exactly certified Healers."

She nodded gratefully, not bothering to hide as she looked towards the far bed where Seamus was just visible as a long lump beneath the covers. "Is he still sleeping well?"

"Romilda made a really good Sleeping Draught—she's great with Potions. He hasn't stirred since we gave it to him, but he's still breathing and everything just fine. Having a rest really is what's best for him. You can check on him yourself if you want."

"No, that's okay. As long as you're sure all his arms and legs are still attached." "As much as they have been since Carrow finished with him." Neville smiled.

Nodding, she uncrossed her legs and started to get up. "I should get back to the girls' dorm, then. I'm sorry I bothered you."

"Wait!" He put out a hand, and she stopped, looking curiously at him. He shifted uncomfortably, suddenly not sure whether he wanted to say what had been keeping him awake. "I just ... never mind."

"What, Neville?" She sat down again, her legs dangling over the edge of the bed as she leaned back, propping herself on her arms. Her hands and feet vanished into the pajamas, and she looked smaller than ever. Neville felt the sense of guilt rise to a level that seemed to choke him. For all her fire, she was still Ron's baby sister, and he had all but agreed to kill her today. He had no right. He had no right with any of them.

"I just ... what happened earlier. I've been thinking about it. You guys made a mistake, a big mistake." He looked pleadingly at her. "Just because I was the first one to say something, doesn't mean—you would have figured it out, I know it. That doesn't make me the leader. I can't be the leader. I can't do this, I can't take that kind of responsibility, I'm not good enough."

Ginny frowned at him. "Why not?"

"Because ..." He trailed off, gesturing at himself as if to indicate that the answer was obvious. "You know."

She tilted her head at him, seeming to give the matter serious consideration for a few seconds, then spoke, her voice lightly tinged with an edge of sarcasm. "You know, you're at least as tall as Ron, your voice has changed, and I think you shave more often than Harry, so it really confuses me."

He blinked. "What?"

"Well, that would seem to indicate that you've got a working set of what they do, so I don't see why you constantly refuse to use them."

Neville blushed fiercely. "Ginny!"

"Oh, come off it!" She rolled her eyes. "I'm the only girl in a family of seven! I could belch the entire Chudley Cannons fight song by the time I was four, but Katie Bell had to tell me when I needed a bra and show me how to put the effing thing on, so don't act like I'm supposed to be some sheltered little flower about how boys are put together."

"I don't ... I mean ... I just ..." He was at a complete loss for words, but Ginny was not.

"I don't understand you, Neville Longbottom. The only person I've ever known who sells themselves as constantly short as you do is Ron, and even he's not that bad. You seem dead set on proving to everyone that you're worthless, and woe be to anyone who says differently. And don't start on your Gran, either. Even Professor McGonagall says she needs to stop—"

"Yeah, I know," Neville broke in. "Stop trying for the grandson she wishes she had and start being proud of the one she has. That's not something you say to someone whose kid is something great, Ginny. That's something you say when someone needs to settle for what they've gotten."

"That's not what she meant, and you know it!"

"It's true, though!" He stood, aware that he was using his height over her, but determined to make her listen to what seemed to him to be the inescapable truth. "I'm not half the wizard my Dad was. He was an Auror! He and my—" Neville stopped abruptly and looked away, feeling suddenly sick as he remembered that Ginny had been there that awful day at St. Mungo's and seen what had become of his parents.

A long moment passed, and then he felt her hand on his arm. She had stood as well, and her touch was surprisingly gentle. "What?" Her voice was kind, but held a deep undercurrent of stubbornness as well. "Neville, what exactly happened to your parents? I've seen the Cruciatus Curse now, I know how awful it is, but it's not that simple, is it?"

"It was my fault." Neville was stunned to hear the words come out of his mouth. He had never spoken them aloud before, no matter how many times they had repeated in his head and heart, but now it was as if some invisible line had been crossed, and he couldn't stop it. "They were after me. I don't know why, no one knows why—but they thought if they could get me, they could figure out what Harry had done to make You-Know-Who disappear. Maybe they thought it was something in Aurors' kids, or kids born in July, or one-year-olds, or ... my parents hid me in a closet. Put a Silencing Charm on it and concealed the door. It cost them their chance to get away ... They couldn't tell them where he was, they didn't know, but if they'd said where ... If they'd just ..."

He buried his face in his hands and sank down to the bed again, ashamed to feel hot tears seeping between his fingers but unable to keep them back. "Fourteen hours. Oh, God, Ginny, they tortured them for fourteen hours! The Healers ... the body protects itself. Anything that causes that kind of pain for more than a few minutes ... it should be an awful injury ... injuries cause endorphins, shock, you pass out, you die. A person isn't meant to be in that kind of pain that's just pain for that long. The brain can't cope! If they'd just ..." A sob so deep it hurt choked the words. "I wasn't worth it! I wish they'd known I wasn't worth it! They let themselves be worse than killed for me, and I'm nothing compared to them!"

All the shame, all the pain, all the guilt of sixteen years had come to the surface now, and Neville could say nothing more. He didn't even care if Ginny was there or not. His knees drew up to his chest, and he wrapped his arms around them in a tight ball, as if he could make himself disappear, undo the very fact of his existence. The sobs came from somewhere so grievous that they didn't even have sound, they were just great, heaving gasps that seemed to tear him apart as the tears soaked the knees of his pajamas in wide dark patches.

Neville wept until his throat was raw and his chest ached. He did not know if it had been minutes, hours, or even days, but at last his swollen eyes seemed to run dry. Only then did he notice that something soft and warm was curled against his back, slender arms encircling his shoulders in a gentle embrace. Immediately, an awareness of what he had just done came flooding over him, and he sat up quickly, shaking her off with a look of horrified embarrassment. "I'm ... I'm so sorry ... I don't know—"

Her face held none of the contempt or pity he had expected to see. Instead, the brown eyes were looking at him with an expression so unexpected that he was at a loss to identify it. She reached towards him again, placing one small hand unflinchingly on his shoulder, and said the last thing he had ever imagined she would. "You are so much stronger than I thought you were."

"What?" His voice was hoarse, almost gone entirely.

"Harry's got half the wizarding world petting him and calling him a hero and consoling him about his parents. Ron's down on himself all the time, but it's all in his head, and he's going to figure that out one of these days, even if Hermione has to write it down on something heavy and beat him with it. You... you've carried that around all these years alone, and when it's weighed you down, people have just added to it without even knowing it was there ... and the one person who did know has made it the heaviest of all. That you've managed to keep going is strong enough, but you've done so much more than that. It's amazing." The respect in her voice was completely genuine, but Neville shook his head in confusion.

"I haven't, though. I screw up everything I try. I'm not a hero at all," he protested.

"I saw you fight the Squad in Umbridge's office, and the Death Eaters at the Ministry, and again at the tower. You're not nearly as bad as you think you are most of the time, but when you fight ..." she shook her head slowly, "you're amazing."

"Harry—"

A hand over his mouth cut him off, and now those sharp brown eyes were only inches from his. "I've watched you both. Harry fights bravely. So does Ron, so does Hermione—hell, we're Gryffindors, we all fight bravely. But you're something else. I've never even seen anyone in the Order who fights with the kind of rawness and intensity you do. It's a little scary, honestly."

Neville pulled her hand away from his mouth, turning so that he didn't have to look at her. "That's not the same. I'm not me when I fight. It's like something happens," he tapped his chest, "like something starts screaming or roaring or something, and it drowns out everything else and I just lose it."

Ginny came up behind him again, draping herself across his shoulders and placing her hand flat against his chest where he had gestured. "I think that thing is you, Neville. It's who you really are— a brave, powerful wizard, the son of two famous Aurors and a courageous soldier in your own right— and if I'd been cooped up and shoved down and hidden that long under such a heavy load, I'd probably start screaming if I had half a chance to get out too."

He shook his head, not bothering to move her hand this time. "You just don't get it."

"Fine." She tossed her head, swinging the braids behind her, and now her lips were barely an inch from his ear, and her voice held a low, almost savage intensity. "Let's say you're right. That you're worthless. A complete failure as a wizard and as a man. What are you going to do about it?"

Neville was unsure of how to answer this complete turnaround, and he shrugged, half in confusion, half in defiance. "There's nothing to do. I've been trying for years."

"No, you haven't. You've just accepted that it's how things are. Is there any hope for your parents?"

The question caught him off guard. "No. They say there's the faintest chance if LeStrange dies, but even that's thinner than the odds of You-Know-Who just deciding to turn himself in."

"So they gave their sanity—really, their lives—for you. What do you think they would say if she was killed and they did wake up tomorrow? 'Gee, son, we're so glad to see that you've tortured yourself with our gift?' Or maybe, 'How touching to see that they actually broke all three of us?' Or do you think that it might be a little better to be able to say to them: 'You thought I was worth everything, and that love was worth more than what anyone else could say, and I have lived every moment as though you could see me.' "

"How am I supposed to do that?"

"If it had never happened, if your parents were still fully themselves, what would they be doing?"

For the first time in what seemed like forever, Neville knew exactly what to say. "They'd be in the Order."

"Sort of like my parents, then?" He nodded. "Yeah."

"And would they be proud to know that you were leading Dumbledore's Army here at Hogwarts, or would they want you to back down and say you weren't sure if their kid was good enough?"

"They would want me to lead the DA," Neville said slowly.

Her voice was softer now, but no less firm. "So maybe it's time to stop living because of them and start living for them."

There was a long pause in which neither of them moved or said a word, and then Neville reached up and silently shifted her away from him. Ginny did not protest, but sat back on her heels and watched as he crossed the room to his bed, stopping briefly to check that Seamus was still sleeping in peaceful oblivion.

Without looking at her, he reached under his pillow and withdrew something small and square, then rummaged in his nightstand, using his wand to search through the empty sweet wrappers, bits of parchment, spare quills, and half-packs of playing cards until he found what he was looking for. Placing the small picture frame on the top of the nightstand, he opened the latch at the back and removed the photograph of himself, Dean, and Seamus with their faces painted crimson and gold at the victory party for Gryffindor's first Quidditch Cup. In its place, he slipped in the one he had pulled out from under his pillow.

It was a picture of a young family. A wizard with Neville's nose and straight brown hair smiled proudly next to a witch who could only be his mother and who held a six-month-old baby in her arms, tickling his belly to make him laugh and wiggle for the camera. Satisfied that it was secure in the frame, he turned the picture to face his bed, then looked up. "It's a picture of my parents and me from before," he explained, aware that Ginny could not see it.

Raising an eyebrow curiously, Ginny hopped off the bed and shuffled over, not bothering to pull up the legs of the pajamas where they had unrolled over her feet. She stared at the picture for a long moment, then smiled. "You were cute." She paused, cupping her chin in her hand and regarding him with mock severity. "Still are, now that I really look at you... but taller. And more hair."

A thin smile passed over his lips at the jest, and he pointed to the picture. His body felt odd, even alien, and he realized that he was standing differently now: his spine straight, his shoulders back, his chin raised defiantly as he met her eyes without allowing any trace of shame to drop his gaze. "I'm not going to hide that any more."

"Oh?"

He shook his head, then looked at the picture, for the first time not feeling the stab of guilt that usually shuddered through him at the sight of the bright, lively expressions on their faces. When he spoke, Neville heard a voice that was deeper, stronger than it had ever been before, a voice that was surprisingly familiar from old family recordings. It was his father's voice, but it came from his lips.

"I want them to see me."

"The Chinese Chomping Cabbage, or Brassica oleracea var. carnivorus, as it is scientifically known, is, like its Muggle cousin, a member of the mustard family. The common name, however, is somewhat misleading. Although certainly a cabbage, and if you have any doubts about the chomping portion, I would advise you against putting your fingers too close to it, it is actually native to the Korean Peninsula. The extremely piquant nature of this particular vegetable has lead to the development of a popular native dish, which attempts to replicate the flavor with somewhat less danger to the gardener. In addition to the culinary uses, which I recommend sparingly and only to extremely adventurous souls, the Chomping Cabbage is a primary ingredient in Pepper-Up Potion, used in cases of hypothermia ..."

Neville listened only half-attentively to Professor Sprout's lecture. He had already studied the chapter before class, and he could have recited the information by heart before she ever began. Herbology had always been both his favorite and his best subject, but now it was even more so, as it was one of the few courses that had remained completely untouched by the school's change in administration. Usually, no matter how well he knew the material, he would always pay close attention in hopes of picking up a few extra tidbits of knowledge, but today, he had more important things on his mind.

Pretending to take notes, he shifted a little on the bench, poking Hannah Abbott gently in the ribs. She jumped, then shot him a glare that could have wilted every plant in the greenhouse. He sighed. They had been partners in Herbology since the first year, but for some reason, she was ignoring him today. Neville would have been willing to write off her sudden iciness to the endless incomprehensible vagaries of female behavior, but that was not an option under the circumstances.

He poked her again, this time shifting his notes so that they were almost directly in front of her. With an annoyed little sniff, she looked down at what he had written. Everything okay?

Her look was more than answer enough, and she crossed her arms, keeping her attention resolutely on Professor Sprout, who was demonstrating the proper protection needed against both teeth and burns when harvesting leaves. As if by accident, the wand held loosely in her left hand brushed against the parchment, and the words changed. Picking up where Harry left off, are we?

Neville's eyes widened. She knew already! He had been trying to alert her to the resurgence of the DA, but apparently, someone else had gotten there first. A feeling of mingled excitement and fear coursed through him as he wondered whether the news was just being that eagerly received, or whether it had somehow leaked out through less desirable means. He gave the parchment a subtle tap of his own. Who told you?

Her eyes never seemed to leave the front of the class, but her spine straightened until she held herself with almost painfully flawless posture. I have friends in Gryffindor other than you.

Slowly, a possible reason for her displeasure began to dawn on him, and he tried to catch her eye with a sheepish, apologetic little smile. I'm sorry. You should have heard it from me first. I wanted to tell you myself.

Don't bother. The letters seemed unusually dark this time, and then he realized that they were actually burned into the parchment. Moreover, they were continuing to smolder, expanding into formless dark patches as the interiors burned away in glowing red circles. Suppressing a cry of alarm, Neville grabbed a nearby watering can and put out the burning scrap, causing Professor Sprout to pause, one eyebrow raised beneath her flyaway gray hair.

"Mr. Longbottom?"

Neville felt his cheeks heat, and he looked down, waving his wand at the sodden, blackened mess and vanishing it. "I'm sorry, ma'am. I guess I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing ... thinking about the heating properties of the cabbages and all."

She gave him the endlessly tolerant look that he was so familiar with from other teachers, and he felt a surprising surge of resentment towards Hannah that he had received it now from Professor Sprout, of all people. "That's all right, no harm done. Now, as I was saying, contact with the sap on bare skin must be avoided if at all possible ..."

As soon as her attention had returned to the plant in front of her, Neville leaned in close to his partner. "Why did you do that?" he hissed as quietly as he could.

Hannah did not respond, but merely flicked her wand again. For a moment, it seemed as though nothing had happened, and then he felt the front of his robes grow warm, and realized in a single moment of near blinding terror that his pants were about to catch fire. Desperately, no longer caring whether anyone noticed, he pointed his wand at himself and yelped " Protego!" The burning sensation stopped instantly, and he thought he caught a tiny, vindictive smile on Hannah's lips as Professor Sprout turned again.

This time, however, Hannah raised her hand before the teacher could ask him what had happened. "I'm sorry, Professor," she said with a horrible sweetness, "it's my fault. I think I've developed an allergy to something over here. My wand just went off. Can I be assigned another partner, please?"

The look on the Professor's face made it perfectly clear that not only did she not believe a word of it, she was starting to seriously doubt Neville's previous excuse as well. However, this was clearly not the first time she had seen something go roots-up between class partners, and she simply motioned towards an empty spot on a bench a few rows down. "Dean Thomas is no longer with us, Miss Abbott, so you may partner with Mr. Finnigan if you wish."

"Thank you, Professor," she said with the same cloying sweetness, and without looking at Neville, she scooped up her book and gardening tools and glided across the greenhouse to sit next to Seamus. Now completely confused, Neville did his best to try and catch her eye for the rest of the class— with the result being that he nearly choked his cabbage by forgetting to chop the grubs they were feeding it and had to use a last-second Anapnea Charm to save the rapidly purpling plant—but she steadfastly ignored his attempts. What's more, she seemed to be uncharacteristically fawning over Seamus. As far as Neville knew, she had never been more than polite acquaintances with him, but now she seemed to be going out of her way to laugh at all of his comments, fuss over the remains of the bruises he still bore from the previous day, and sit so close to him that it seemed to him a miracle either could even move.

When the lesson had finally ended, Hannah was gone from the greenhouse so quickly that he thought for a moment that she had Apparated, before he finally caught a glimpse of yellow-trimmed robes and long pigtails vanishing around a large Flutterby bush. "Hannah!" he shouted. "Wait!"

She did not acknowledge having heard him, and Neville broke into a sprint. By the time he caught up with her outside the farthest greenhouse, he was red-faced and panting, as well as more than a little bit peeved. She tried to sweep away, her chin raised haughtily, but he grabbed her elbow. Hannah stopped then, turning to stare at him with fierce indignation. "Let go, you ..." Her face screwed up as if she couldn't find a word bad enough.

Neville glanced in all directions, then, satisfied that no one else was nearby, he lowered his head near hers and spoke sharply but quietly. "Look, it's not as if I'm writing Harry off or anything, if that's what you're mad about. No one is. But he's not here now. I don't understand why you're being this way; we've always been friends. I would have thought you'd be ... well, proud of me, I guess."

To his utter shock, Hannah's eyes abruptly filled with tears. "I suppose I should be, shouldn't I? I mean, it's not like Harry was the only one who thought ... and I guess ... I guess it's certainly a step up for you."

Confused at the tears, but glad that she seemed to be grasping the necessity of the situation, Neville nodded. "Exactly. I'm so glad you understand, that really means a lot."

At this, she broke down completely with a loud, wailing sob. Dumbstruck, he stared at her, frozen to the spot until, with a cry like a scorned banshee, she grabbed up a Fanged Geranium off a nearby rack and flung it directly at his head. He ducked, and the snapping plant missed him by so little that he actually felt a tooth graze his ear. "Hannah!"

Another Fanged Geranium flew his way, and this time, he dove for cover behind one of the larger terracotta urns that would hold Devil's Snare later in the year. "Don't 'Hannah' me, you son of a bludger!" she screeched. "You could have at least had the guts to tell me yourself, but NO, I have to hear it from Demelza!" A Snargaluff pod burst a few inches from his right knee. Her aim was disturbing. "That little ..."—he batted the next one away with his wand—"... red-headed ..."—he ducked, and this time, the writhing green tentacles hit exactly where his shoulder had just been— "BITCH!"

Surprise overtook safety, and Neville stood up, blinking. "What?"

"You and Ginny Weasley!" The next pod hit him full in the face, and Neville dropped his wand as he toppled backwards, clutching desperately at the foul-smelling tendrils that were shoving into his mouth and nose, choking him. "She was up there for over an hour last night, you git! Did you think no one would notice ? No one would say anything?!"

" Expelliarmus !" Still on the ground, fighting for air against the increasingly ferocious plant smothering his face and neck, Neville heard a howl of indignation from Hannah as another voice shouted out the disarming spell. He recognized it instantly, but was not sure if it was the best or worst person that could have come to his aid.

" YOU!" Hannah's cry was pure murder.

The tentacles had choked off his air completely now. His attempts to pry them away grew weaker with each passing moment, and as blackness closed in around the edges of his vision, the last thought Neville was completely aware of was that it shouldn't have been any surprise that the craziest Death Eater out there was a girl.

"Neville? Neville? Neville, say something. I'm so sorry. Please say something. Neville?"

It seemed to take a very long time for the sounds that filtered through the spinning blackness to mean anything, even though he was rather sure that they should. Gradually, awareness dawned,

bringing with it three equally concrete certainties. First, that 'Neville' was his name. Second, that his throat and nose felt as though they had been scoured out with steel wool. And third, that he had apparently been completely unconscious through the most unlikely event of his entire distinctly odd time at Hogwarts: two witches fighting about him. Slowly, his head pounding, Neville opened his eyes and pushed himself to a sitting position on the damp ground. Hannah and Ginny were kneeling a little ways away, matching looks of concern on both their faces. Both also sported hair and robes that were badly disheveled, and Ginny had a rapidly swelling and darkening black eye that complemented Hannah's bloody lip. He touched his own burning face, feeling the raised welts there from the Snargaluff's attack. What a pathetic group they made.

"Oh, Neville, I'm sorry." Hannah started to reach towards him, then stopped, her hands fluttering uncertainly about a foot away from him. "You must be furious."

"No." He shook his head, still trying to process the entirety of what had happened. "Not furious. Think maybe Confunded, but not furious."

"Well," Ginny said helpfully, "Demelza had a crush on Dean."

Neville frowned. "Thomas?"

"Exactly." Hannah spoke as though he obviously understood the entire thing now. He did not.

Thankfully, Ginny continued. "But I was going out with him, so she decided he was a prat anyway, and she went back to her other crush, which had been on Harry, but he had been going with Cho, and Demelza hated Cho, so she stopped crushing on Harry while he was with her, but then she went back with Roger, and so that made Harry okay to crush again. So Demelza starts going after Harry, not as if he noticed or anything, and then I break up with Dean, and she tries to go with Dean again, but he doesn't have time for her because he got back on the Quidditch team as a favor to me, and then I started going with Harry, and now I'm not with Harry any more, but he's gone, and so is Dean. So of course, when I went out last night, it was obvious that she'd try to use that to trash my reputation as much as she could. I mean, I didn't know she knew, because if I'd known, I'd have told you so that you knew."

Neville blinked very slowly. "Completely obvious. You were—weren't—were with Dean, who Demelza did—didn't—did like, and you were—weren't—were with Harry, who she also did—didn't— did like, so Hannah Abbott nearly kills me after trying to set my pants on fire in Herbology. Makes perfect sense."

Ginny looked at him the way that a parent looks at their beloved but rather dim baby. "Demelza told Hannah—and every other girl in the school she could get a hold of—that you and I were snogging for hours last night, when, like I've told her now, we were actually looking after Seamus and making plans for the other thing ... which, by the way, she said yes to, and she's going to tell Ernie and the others after dinner."

Little by little, like the sun breaking the horizon on a badly overcast morning, the truth began to come clear. "And you ..."—he looked at where Hannah was sitting, looking deeply embarrassed with herself—"wanted to kill me, because only a complete git would try to steal Harry's girl the moment he left, and you thought I was a better friend to him than that."

The two girls exchanged a look that spoke volumes in a language of which Neville was completely ignorant, then Hannah nodded. "More or less." There was a pause, and then she turned to Ginny as though killing her had never even crossed her mind. "Are they always this dim?"

Ginny gave the matter a moment's thought, then shook her head. "No. Remember that time last year when Ron looked like he'd been attacked by a flock of birds?"

"Yeah."

"Well, that's exactly what had happened, Hermione Granger had done it just after the start of the Lavender fiasco, and they're not always this dim. If they're Weasleys, they're worse." She patted the older Hufflepuff consolingly on the shoulder. "There's always hope."

Neville's eyes narrowed. "Hope for what?"

Hannah gave a great, deep sigh and stood, offering him her hand to help him stand up again. He did so, still slightly dizzy, though he was not sure if that was from the near-suffocation or the conversation surrounding it. She was looking at him now with an expression that seemed to be made of pieces of most of the feelings Neville had ever heard of and several more that he was sure he hadn't, and at last she spoke. "Hope for all of this, Neville. Hope for us."

He nodded, pleased at last to have something simple he could agree to with no possibility of misunderstanding. "Yeah, there's always hope."

A bell rang inside the castle, and Hannah jumped. "I've got to go, I'm going to be late for History of Magic." Then she was gone in a flurry of black and yellow robes, and he was alone with Ginny, who was gathering up her bag, where, he realized, she had probably dropped it in the course of saving his life.

He knelt down, picking up a loose quill and handing it to her. "Thank you, by the way."

"No problem. My fault anyway, really." She smiled sheepishly, patting her hair back into place. "But I guess Hufflepuff knows now, and Parvati told her sister this morning, so that's Ravenclaw, too."

Neville picked up his own bag and slung it over his shoulder as they began to make their way back up the path that led to the school. "If everyone still has their coins, I'll get the information out as soon as I have it figured."

She nodded, turning as the path split to follow it down towards Hagrid's hut, where he could already see the other sixth-years gathering for Care of Magical Creatures. "Okay, I'll make sure to keep it where I can feel it."

"Great. Oh, and one more thing ..." he called after her, and she paused. "Make sure that when it happens, you remind me to see that Hannah has something to throw. That girl doesn't miss."

Ginny gave him a very odd little smile. "Well ..." she said, "... most of the time."


	4. Chapter 3: Resistance

There were so many more of them than he had expected. Neville had added up the remaining members of the D.A., and the numbers had worried him deeply. Only twelve of the original thirty were still at the school—scarcely enough for a good brawl, much less a serious battle—but as he looked around the Room of Requirement, easily three times that many faces stared back at him. He had hoped his count might be off, but this was absurd.

He shifted nervously, clutching the scrap of parchment that held his notes as though it would protect him from the expectant stares of so many pairs of eyes.

"Well ..." His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat, feeling himself flush with embarrassment. "Um ... this is ... there's a lot of you. I'd really thought ... uh ... that it would be just ... a couple of us." Fantastic. Just fantastic. Real way to inspire them in their choice of leader.

Romilda Vane tossed her head, sweeping her thick, dark hair out of her eyes with one hand. "You don't mind having a few more wands on your side, do you?"

"No! It's just ... not what I expected." He looked around the room again, realizing that he didn't even know most of the people there. "I guess ... we should start with a count or a roll call or a sign- in or something. That's what Harry did last time."

On cue, the air shimmered, and a quill appeared on the table at the head of the room, neatly sitting in a bottle of fresh ink alongside a long roll of parchment. Neville gestured to it.

"Everyone knows that Hermione put a jinx on it last time. I'm not going to do that." Now that he was back on the ground covered in his notes, he grew more confident, and the words started to come easier. "Marietta deserved to have to carry around what she had done for a year when she ratted us out, but if anyone does something like that this time, well, we won't have to worry about being expelled. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that we'd probably be killed or at best sent to Azkaban, much less what they'd do to our families, and personally, I think having that on your conscience would be a lot worse than anything that you could have on your face."

In the front row, Michael Corner crossed his arms and smirked. "That's a real nice sentiment, mate, but I'll be the first to say I'd rather not trust my life to no one here having a streak of yellow."

Ernie cleared his throat indignantly at this, and Michael shot him a look of exasperation. "Oh, really, Ernie, that was nothing against you lot. It was one of ours last time, anyway!"

Ginny stood, her pretty face set in surprisingly harsh lines of determination. "I think we should trust each other. Neville's right, the stakes are too high for anyone to sell out their friends. It would be— "

"No. Michael has a point." Neville was surprised to hear the firmness in his own voice as he cut her off. "And I wasn't finished before. I agree with him completely. If being friends was enough, Harry would still have parents."

The words seemed to echo through a room that was abruptly deafening in its silence, and Neville cleared his throat again.

"You all read about Peter Pettigrew after the ... you know, the whole thing at the Ministry. He betrayed James and Lily Potter, even when he knew it meant they'd be killed, and that should have included Harry, too. If someone can betray his best friend and his whole family, even a helpless baby, we can't say it won't happen to us. But we can't expect it to be just a simple matter of some ugly pimples warding it off, either."

Neville looked down at his notes, reminding himself that he had decided on this before the meeting ever began. That didn't make it any easier. As he forced himself to raise his head and seek out the wide, eager blue eyes he was looking for among the crowd, he felt almost dirty for what he was about to do. "Colin, would you come up here, please?"

Colin Creevey bounced to his feet and almost sprinted to the front of the room, snapping to attention. "Sir?"

Neville smiled gently at the boy who was only ten months younger than he himself, but still seemed so much a child. "Colin, I want to do something. There's a spell called the Fidelius Charm. It's pretty complicated, but I think it's our best hope. Trusting that none of us will tell that the D.A. has come back, where we're meeting, or who's in it is a lot to gamble on, but if I do this, you would be the Secret-Keeper, and that would mean that the only way You-Know-Who and his followers could find out about us is if you told willingly. It couldn't be broken by the Imperius Curse, Veritaserum, or anything like that, but if you told: even if you were under the Cruciatus Curse, even if they were going to kill Dennis ..."

The rosy, freckled cheeks burned a brighter red as if in shame from the very thought of such a thing. "Even if!"

Ritchie Coote, a fifth-year who had played Beater for the Gryffindor Quidditch team the year before, jumped to his feet. "But that's what you just warned us about, the thing Peter Pettigrew broke!"

"I know." Neville did not allow himself to break eye contact with Colin. "And Colin knows, and I think that's exactly why we're safest. Would you betray us the way Harry's parents were betrayed?"

There was not the faintest trace of hesitation. "I'd die first."

"Then—" He was cut off as Ginny seemed to appear out of thin air at his side and grabbed his arm, pulling him away from Colin with surprising force.

"Neville, you can't! You're using him!" Her voice was both pleading and appalled.

"Of course he is." The words, spoken in a voice that was utterly calm and matter-of-fact, shocked them both, and they turned slowly, feeling every eye in the room join them in staring in disbelief at Colin.

For the first time since Neville had known him, Colin looked his age. He had brushed the messy fringe back from his eyes, and he was standing at the front of the room remarkably casually, his hands in his pockets. He was not tall, nor strongly built, but it was suddenly apparent that his shoulders had broadened over the past year or so, cheekbones had emerged from the round face, and his voice held a depth that excitement usually erased as he met the looks from his audience without flinching. "He'd be a fool not to."

Colin took a few steps to his right and turned, now directly in front of the assembled group. "We're all going to be used. This is a war, and we're here because we're agreeing to be soldiers now. Soldiers are meant to be used. Harry's out there right now, fighting for our lives and our freedoms, and those of our families, and he's definitely being used. He's being used for his bravery, Hermione's being used for her brains, Ron's being used for his loyalty. They might die. They know that. Neville's using me because Harry is every hero from every book I used to read as a child, and I had the privilege to know a real, breathing person who made those stories real and showed me that not only did magic exist, but that the people who had made magic worth dreaming about existed too. Betraying him would be betraying everything I have ever believed about what Good meant, and there would be no reason to keep living if I had to stop believing that Good will triumph in the end. Maybe that's stupid, maybe it's naïve, but Neville knows it's true, and I am proud to be used for that."

The soft blue of his eyes suddenly took on the vividness of a summer sky just after a storm. "Don't ask Neville why he's using me. Ask what you can be used for, or leave."

There was a long silence, then Luna stood. "I'm Luna Lovegood, in case some of you who aren't in my house or my year don't know me. I think I can be used because my father prints the Quibbler, the primary alternative news source of the wizarding world, and anything you need to tell the public, I'll find a way to get it in. We have excellent connections among a lot of witches and wizards who have never subscribed to the Ministry. Some of them aren't even known to the government at all."

"Not to be materialistic, certainly," Ernie looked a bit embarrassed, but still determined as he got to his feet, "but my family has done rather well for themselves, and shall we perhaps say that the Malfoys are not the only ones who can make generous endowments should the need present itself for monetary resources. Oh, and I'm Ernie Macmillan."

A blonde, freckle-faced Hufflepuff who seemed vaguely familiar but whom Neville couldn't quite place was the next to rise. "Fritz Bagman. My Dad was a Beater for the Wasps, and I've been training for pro most of my life. I could give a few pointers on good old-fashioned brawling if we lose our wands, how to take hits, physical conditioning—" he gave a good-natured shrug, "or whatever."

"Terry Boot. I've memorized all seven Standard Books of Spells, as well as eighty-six of the supplemental and complimentary texts in the library, and four from the restricted section with special permission of Professor Flitwick."

Ginny muffled a giggle behind her hand. "I guess we won't miss Hermione that much after all."

Boot raised an eyebrow archly, but there was a smile on his lips. "Miss Granger's absence gives me a chance to catch up ... I trail her by half a percent in one subject for highest marks in the school."

"Susan Bones. I have an invisibility cloak my Aunt gave me before..." She trailed off, then caught herself, and her voice rose defiantly again. "It's kind of old, but it still works okay in dim light, or if you hold really still under it."

"Camellia Parkinson. My sister's in Slytherin, but I'm Ravenclaw. I'll say up front that I don't believe Muggle-borns belong in wizarding society, but I believe in Dictatorships less. People should have their minds changed by rational argument, not at wand-point. Pansy doesn't care as long as it doesn't affect her, but I think this affects all of us, so I'm willing to fight with you, and spy on Slytherin if you want me to."

Neville stepped forward again, spreading his hands to stop the half-dozen others who had risen to their feet. "Whoa—this is pretty incredible, but I don't have the best memory at Hogwarts." There was a ripple of giggles at this, and he gave a small, bashful smile. "If you'd all just jot down what you've got—just briefly, like 'invisibility cloak' or 'can spy on Slytherin' next to your names, that would be a lot better. Otherwise, I'm going to wind up asking Anthony to put something in the Quibbler for us. I'll go first." He picked up the quill and signed his name at the top of the parchment, then paused before writing: "Fool in charge."

To his surprise, the parchment shimmered with the look of a heat wave, the same way everything did when the magic of the Room of Requirement was adapting to their needs. Now, the words read: Neville Longbottom—Commander, Dumbledore's Army. He blushed, turning away from the line that had already formed behind him.

Colin was next, and as he finished marking Soldier and Secret-Keeper beside his signature, Neville tapped him quietly on the shoulder and motioned him aside. "That was some speech, Colin."

The younger boy shrugged, beaming with as much of the familiar bright sparkle as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. "I just said what's true."

Yeah, Neville thought ruefully, that's all I did on Tuesday, and look where that got me. "Still," he said, "I really appreciate it. I just wanted you to know that I didn't think of it as using you when I decided on you for the Fidelius Charm. I was honestly thinking of who cared about Harry the most, and I thought about Ginny ..."

"But she's got five more people than I do who could be used against her."

"Exactly." He glanced over to make sure that she was out of earshot, then dropped his voice. "And I think Harry would kill me if he ever found out."

Colin grinned. "So I'm your man!" He pulled out his wand, shoving up his sleeves. "What do we do?"

"Give me a second." Neville reached into the pocket of his robes and pulled out a piece of parchment that had clearly been copied from one of the older spell books in the library. He squinted at the elaborate old-fashioned script, then took a deep breath, concentrating with all his might on the secrets he would be trying to conceal. At last, he drew his own wand, holding it out in front of him as he turned in a slow circle. "Fidelius Incorporium."

Everything in the Room of Requirement took on a vague golden glow, but it seemed to Neville as if only he could see it, because no one else reacted, not even Colin, who looked almost painfully cherubic in the shimmering light. He took another deep breath, focusing on the terrible stakes that made the charm necessary. "Fidelius Sanctus."

The glow became brighter, so much so that he had to squint as everything surrounding him appeared to have been dipped in sunlight.

Now he traced his wand carefully in the air, forming the outline of a cube. The light seemed to gather and coalesce, contracting in and leaving everything oddly dull-looking as it formed a gleaming golden box a little smaller than a deck of cards floating in mid-air. "Fidelius Impervium."

Plucking the box out of the air, Neville held it out on the palm of his hand. It reflected brightly in Colin's eyes as he took it. There was no hesitation, only acceptance and a sense of deep gratitude, and Neville could barely maintain the eye contact so necessary to seal the spell. "Colin Creevey," his voice was barely more than a whisper, "do you swear to become the Secret-Keeper for Dumbledore's Army and all those who are now, ever were, or ever shall be in it? That you will be solely responsible under magical oath for the knowledge of membership, purpose, missions, and all functions and places of meeting? That you understand the nature of the Fidelius Charm, and hold it to be true and binding upon you for all time, or until it is released by the one who placed it upon you?"

"I do."

"Fidelius Finite." The box lifted out of Colin's hand, turning three times in the air. Then, with the speed and abruptness of a bullet, it sped towards his chest, vanishing into his body directly over his heart. Colin gave a great gasp, and his spine arched backwards, his body stiffening, the whites of his eyes showing in eerie, gleaming crescents as his eyes rolled back in his head and the brilliant gold glow enveloped him. For a single, breathless moment, he was suspended, then the glow faded, and he fell to the floor like a rag doll.

"Colin!" Terrified that something had gone horribly wrong, Neville dropped to his knees, but before he had even reached a hand towards the Secret-Keeper, Colin had begun to stir.

He sat up, shaking his head as if trying to clear away the last remnants of a dream, blinked twice, then fixed Neville with the grin of a kid who had just ridden his first broomstick. "Wow."

Relieved almost beyond words that he had not killed one of his fellow students at their very first meeting, Neville reached out one shaking hand and ruffled Colin's hair, letting out a tense laugh as he did so. "You little Stinkpellet, you scared me!"

Someone coughed, and Neville looked up, surprised to see Ginny standing there. "If you're finished throwing people around with your fancy spellwork," she smiled, "the rest of us are trying to have a meeting here." She motioned behind her, and he saw that everyone had finished signing their names and had returned to the chairs and cushions strewn around the room. The weight of their combined stares found him again, and he sighed as he stood, helping Colin to his feet beside him.

"Right." He looked around as Colin scampered back to sit next to his brother as though he became a Secret-Keeper twice daily before breakfast. Neville shook his head, trying to recover his bearings as he fished the crumpled notes from his robes. "Yeah ... so ... looks like the next order of business is to set up some kind of system for how we want to do this. I mean, we already have the coins to communicate—and Terry, if you could Gemino those so everyone has one by the time they leave, that would be great—but this is a little different from when it was just a class we were hiding. We're at war now, and we need a chain of command, as well as some way to handle things if we can't all meet up. I want to assign a ... well, a Lieutenant, I guess, for each house."

He motioned towards Ginny. "I think Ginny Weasley should take Gryffindor. She's got eight family members in the Order of the Phoenix, and her brother's with Harry now. If Dumbledore trusts the Weasleys that much, it's good enough for me. Gryffindors vote?"

Parvati raised her hand, but there was a frown of confusion on her face. "I don't understand, Neville ... you're a Gryffindor, why would we need anyone else?"

"Because," he explained, "I'm going to have my hands full with the whole D.A.. Ginny would take care of stuff that's just our house and report directly to me, just like the other Lieutenants."

Satisfied, Parvati nodded, then raised her hand again. "I vote for Ginny, then."

Hands went up scattered throughout the room, and Ginny seemed to be the only one surprised to see that her housemates had voted her in with unanimous approval. She turned the famous Weasley shade of deep magenta and gave a little curtsy and a wry smile. "Well," she said, "I guess that either means they like me, or they know the twins send me a lot of stuff."

Chuckling, Neville craned his neck over the crowd until he found the next person he was looking for, sprawled on her back almost invisibly in a pile of cushions and twisting a strand of hair around the end of her wand idly. "Luna?"

"Hmmm?" Her voice was as dreamy as ever, as though he were merely going to ask her opinion on what color socks he should wear rather than offer her the command of a group of soldiers.

"Will you take Ravenclaw?"

With an awkward glance at Michael Corner next to him, Anthony Goldstein raised a hand. "Not to be rude, Neville, but, um ... I mean, I don't think she's crazy like some people, but ..." His words trailed off, and he gave a despairing don't-make-me-say-it look at the pile of cushions.

"Okay," Neville shrugged, "show me another Ravenclaw who's held their own against a dozen fully- grown Death Eaters—twice."

Anthony blushed as if caught, and Neville realized that until that moment, Luna's participation in the two fights had been written off by her fellow students as another of her fantasies. Now Anthony cleared his throat and asked tentatively, "You've really done that, Loon—I mean, Luna?"

She sat up, tucking her wand behind her ear and crossing her legs casually. "Oh yes. They're not that scary without their masks on, really. I find it's a lot easier to confront them if you take care of those little psychological games first, so I like to use a Banishing Charm on the masks as soon as it's convenient." The absolutely effortless conviction in her voice had a clear effect on the others, and Anthony's hand was the first into the air by less than a heartbeat.

"Okay," Neville smiled, "we have Luna Lovegood for Ravenclaw." He glanced around. "Hufflepuff ... Ernie?"

"Not meaning to second-guess your decision," Ernie said slowly, "but Hannah's a Prefect too, and I would frankly have expected you to choose her, as you have been known to be friends for some time. I hope that I'm not being selected because ..." he paused, then shrugged, "well, it's no secret you two had a bit of a tiff the other day."

"Actually, it's because she's my friend that I picked you." Neville met Hannah's eyes, hoping she would see that he was sincere. "I want to play to everyone's strengths in this, and for Hufflepuff, you're all such hard workers, that might not always mean the nicest jobs, and I don't want anything to get in the way of what's best for everyone. No offense, but you're not as likely to set off any Gryffindor chivalrous streak, Ernie." To his relief, Hannah didn't look angry at this. If anything, she looked rather touched, and he gave an inward sigh of relief.

Satisfied, Ernie made a little bow. "No offense taken, and I assume the position with the honor it was given."

"Great." Neville said, checking his notes again. "Then we just—"

His words were cut off by a loud crack, and three dozen wands appeared as if out of thin air, pointing at the bizarre figure that had just appeared in the middle of the room.

It was short, coming barely to Neville's waist, and wore what appeared to be a large copper cooking pot on its head, only the mouth, chin, and the tips of two bat-like ears visible beneath this strange helmet. One of Ron's unmistakable lumpy maroon Christmas sweaters had been shrunken into a kind of tunic, and two bandoleers of Tasmanian Thumping Toadstools were slung criss-cross over the thin chest. Each long foot was clad in a half-dozen wildly mismatched socks that dragged the floor, and the spindly hands clutched a rusty, ancient saber easily as tall as the entire creature, propping it over one shoulder like a rifle.

Ginny was the first to recover her voice. "Dobby?"

The house-elf snapped smartly to attention, clicking his heels together as crisply as the many socks would allow, though not seeming to realize that he was facing the blank wall. His high voice echoed oddly beneath the cavernous pot. "Dobby has come to join the friends of Harry Potter, sir!"

All of the veteran D.A. members exchanged a nervous glance. "Does Professor Snape know about this?" Neville asked.

"No, sir! Professor Snape cannot forbid Dobby from joining something he does not know about." The little mouth broke into a wide grin.

"Dobby can say nothing bad about Professor Snape, but Dobby can say that he is a very good Death Eater, oh yes, and that he is most faithful to the Dark Lord, and Neville Longbottom can make of that what he will!"

Neville smiled and lifted the pot off of the elf's head, revealing the huge eyes, which stared up at him with the open adoration that was reserved for the very closest friends of the idolized Harry Potter. "The house-elves do not like their new masters, sir. Dobby has formed H.E.L.P. for you!"

"H.E.L.P?"

"House-Elves to Liberate Potter! We are resisting, sir, in all the ways we can." His eyes narrowed, and he glanced around the room with a vindictive little look. "The Death Eaters, sir, we have neglected to salt their food! And we do not clean their washrooms quite as often! And sometimes..." He swallowed hard, trembling slightly with his own audacity. "... sometimes, we leave dust bunnies under their beds."

Neville barely managed to keep a straight face. "You don't dare."

Dobby nodded solemnly. "Oh, yes, Neville Longbottom, sir. We are most serious. We will assist the friends of Harry Potter any way we can. Dobby has come prepared to join the battle!" He made several swiping and thrusting motions with the immense sword, but it was too large for him, and he overbalanced, tripping on the dangling socks and falling to the floor in a heap of gangly limbs.

Giggling madly, Ginny extended a hand to help the now slightly cross-eyed elf to his feet again. "That's really brave of you, Dobby, but we're not fighting yet. This is just the first meeting."

Dobby looked crestfallen, and Neville knelt down so that they were at the same level. "You can still be helpful, though. I'm going to give you this;" he reached into his pocket and pulled out the charmed Galleon, "as a real D.A. member, so you know when we have meetings, and I want you to come and report on everything that Snape and the Carrows and the other followers of You-Know- Who have been up to. You're going to be our eyes and ears. It's a very important mission, can you handle it?"

The round eyes brimmed with tears of joy, and Neville had the breath driven from him as the surprisingly heavy elf threw himself onto Neville's neck in an enormous hug of gratitude. "Oh, yes! Yes! Dobby will tell Harry Potter's friends everything! Everything!"

Thankfully, Ginny saw that their leader was beginning to turn rather purple, and she gently pried the enthusiastic little creature's arms away. Her voice was still shaking with giggles, but she managed to keep her expression serious. "Okay, now you'd better get going before anyone misses you."

Dobby grabbed up his pot-helmet and planted it back on his head again, then snapped to attention and saluted the assembled D.A. with a loud clang. "Dobby will do his duty! And H.E.L.P. will see to it that best cakes and tea are in all the common rooms after the meeting, and that your rooms are most perfectly clean!" With another clanging salute and a crack, the elf was gone.

There was a long silence, and then Ernie Macmillan spoke, his face utterly deadpan. "Well, it's good to know we have allies."

Fritz Bagman nodded, though he could not keep his own laughter back so easily. "Thank goodness, or we might be facing dust bunnies as well as Death Eaters!"

This was the last straw for most of them, and the room dissolved into the giggles, laughter, and outright guffaws that had been held back while Dobby was there. It went on a long time, and as it was finally dying away, Neville wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his robes and looked out across the room. Their numbers had stopped being intimidating now that they weren't all lined up in strict rows staring at him.

Over the course of the meeting, the tight little groups of veterans and new people had collapsed. Now they were all mingled together: tall, confident seventh-years next to nervous fourth and fifth-years, bold Gryffindor scarlet, cool Ravenclaw blue, and bright Hufflepuff yellow mixing freely.

So many different skills and personalities, so many different backgrounds, hopes, and fears, but they were all there for one reason: the same reason that had driven the most servile and accommodating creatures in the magical world to what was for them the very extremity of revolt. They were there to fight, to defy the cruel, unjust tyranny that had been forced upon them. They would break this siege, and maybe, just possibly, it did not seem too much to hope that they might even win this war.

He wondered if this was how Harry had felt that first night in that dark, filthy pub in Hogsmeade, and he wondered where his friend was now. Somewhere You-Know-Who wouldn't like, he was certain. Neville closed his eyes, willing Harry and the others to know somehow that they were not alone. Whenever, wherever, however they were needed, they would be ready. He had an army at his command, and he was not afraid.


	5. Chapter 4: The Art Of Growing Up

"Neville!" The suit of armor in the fifth-floor corridor seemed to have suddenly developed a girl's voice, and Neville jumped, snatching his wand out of the inside pocket of his robes as his bag hit the floor with a loud thud. "What?! Who?" There was no one there, not even in the dark shadows of the helmet's open faceplate, and he frowned. "Who said that?"

"It's me, Luna." As she spoke again, he recognized the voice, oddly distorted by the armor's tinny echo.

"Where are you?"

"In the Ravenclaw common room. I put a Ventrilocutious Charm on my voice. Can you hear me?"

It was very strange to be talking to an empty suit of armor, but Neville nodded, then paused, unsure if she could see him as well as hear him. He decided to play it safe. "Yes, what's going on?"

"There was something in the Quibbler this morning. The Prophet hasn't said anything, but I think people need to know. Can you call another meeting?"

"Not yet. It's only been three days since the last one, and I don't want to make them too close together."

Luna's soft voice had an edge of excitement to it that Neville had rarely heard before. "It's worth it, really!"

Taking a deep breath, he considered it for a moment. It would be risky, but anything that could get Luna Lovegood so worked up probably was worth the chance. Although, he thought, if it's just that someone has sighted a Blibbering Whatsit or a Crinkle-Horned Thingy, I'll kill her. "All right," he agreed, "watch your coin ... I can't chance another full meeting, but I'll call the Lieutenants."

The faceplate of the helmet clanked shut in answer, and Neville picked up his bag again, breaking into a jog as he continued down the corridor towards the now-renamed Dark Arts classroom. Lateness was not as tolerated as it once had been.

He had thought that the Room of Requirement would seem cavernous and empty with only four people present, but it had proved adaptable as ever. Although it had been vastly proportioned every time he had been in there before, it was now no larger than a modest sitting room, comfortably furnished with four leather chairs surrounding an elegant wooden table in front of a crackling fire. The banners of their three houses hung above the stone mantle, and quills, parchment, and ink had been ready at each place, a shining silver Sneakoscope perched silently in the middle of the table.

Neville looked at the three fellow students sitting around him. Ernie had come directly from Quidditch practice, and his hair was still wet from the showers, a white towel slung around his neck against the canary yellow and black trim of his track suit. Ginny had a quill stuck behind one ear and a splotch of ink on her nose, her sleeves rolled up to reveal a half-dozen notes on spell pronunciation jotted on the back of her hand and forearm. Only Luna seemed to have not been caught in the middle of something else, sitting neatly in her uniform with her usual radish-shaped earrings dangling beneath her long mane of pale blonde hair.

Ernie looked at her with barely-concealed annoyance as he took the towel from around his neck and rubbed at his head vigorously, scattering a few drops of water over the rest of them. "You said it was important, Luna?"

"It's about Harry."

With those words, Luna captured the undivided attention of all three of them, and Neville leaned towards her, propping himself on his elbows. "Is he all right?"

She reached into her bag and pulled out what looked like a roll of class notes, but as she spread them on the table in front of them, they transformed into a copy of the Quibbler. The headline seemed to scream up at them:

Harry Potter Defies Ministry with Daring Break-In! Dozens of Muggle-Borns Spirited to Safety!

"It happened a week ago," she explained, "but it was completely hushed up by the Ministry, and Dad didn't start getting reports from witnesses who had escaped until the weekend. He printed a special edition for it."

Neville squinted at the blurry photograph on the front page. It had clearly been taken by someone who had no chance to properly aim the camera, but it seemed to show a large, burly wizard with a thick beard shoving a middle-aged couple into one of the Ministry fireplaces as he fired a spell back over his shoulder. "I don't see Harry anywhere."

"That's him." Luna tapped the photo with her wand, indicating the tall wizard. "It looks like the Death Eater, Runcorn, but witnesses say he broke into the courtrooms where the MBRC was holding those awful trials, Stunned Umbridge and Yaxley, and produced a stag Patronus to get past the Dementors and help about fifty people escape!"

Ginny let out a little gasp. "Polyjuice Potion! It's what we used at the wedding to hide Harry! They must have nicked some!"

Ernie leaned in close to the picture, his eyes searching it hungrily. "That might be Harry's wand, now that I look at it."

"And Mafalda Hopkirk was helping him, and Reginald Cattermole, and they don't even work in the same Department ... and Cattermole himself swears that Mafilda called Runcorn 'Harry,' and that their Patronuses were an otter and a little dog."

Neville jumped to his feet, unable to suppress a cry of triumph as he pumped his fist in the air. "Ron and Hermione, I knew it! I knew they'd fight him!"

"Did they get away?" Ginny's voice was barely more than a whisper, her face pale as she trailed her fingers almost wistfully over the newspaper. Luna nodded, and her eyes closed. Neville thought he saw a glimmer of tears beneath the thick, coppery lashes, and she let out a thin little laugh. "He's alive."

He wondered if she meant Harry or her brother—or if she even knew herself—and he placed one hand on her shoulder, giving it a small, comforting squeeze as he leaned in over the table. "You're right, Luna, that is fantastic news. Do you have any more of these?"

She shook her head. "No, but I'm sure we can figure out a way to smuggle them in. I'll put Ravenclaw on it. If there's a spell out there that will get them in past the new security, we'll find it. I can get this one because my Dad and I have Encrypting Amulets that let him send me the Quibbler as simple letters, but it only works for one copy at a time, and it might look a little suspicious if he started writing me dozens of letters at once."

"Speaking of dozens ..." All eyes turned to Ernie, who was smiling a bit ruefully. "I was going to wait to tell you, old chap, but we may have a wee problem with Hufflepuff."

Neville frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Well, of course, no one has been able to say anything with the Fidelius in place, but there's been a good amount of guessing, and I've been getting a lot of requests. There are a few more who want to join, it seems."

"How is that a problem?" Ginny asked.

Ernie gave a nervous little laugh. "I think it might be noticed if every Hufflepuff in fourth year and up vanished at the same time every week or so."

"All of them?" Neville was dumbstruck.

"All but six, to be exact. And those six are new to Hogwarts this year; they were being taught at home before it became mandatory."

"But ... all of them?"

His disbelief seemed to have rather offended Ernie, and he crossed thick arms over his chest, his chin thrust out as if daring anyone to question him further. "All of us who were there for Cedric Diggory."

Neville blushed, feeling abruptly stupid. "I'm sorry. I should have—"

"You're usually the house that turns out the heroes, no one's going to pretend you're not." Ernie gave a respectful little nod towards Ginny and Neville. "But Cedric was ours, and he was bloody magnificent. Brave, smart, good-looking ... everyone said he was the best Hufflepuff had to offer in fifty years, and that's not saying so little as you lot might think. More Orders of Merlin have gone to Hufflepuff than Gryffindor, you know. You might go leaping to the front when a fight breaks out, but we're the ones who never even think of giving up, no matter what."

Nodding, Nevillle sat down again, looking at Ernie with a touch of shame. "I never meant it like that. I used to wish desperately I was one of you."

Now it was Ernie's turn to look stunned. "But you're a Gryffindor."

"Well," he cast a quick look at Ginny, "I'm willing to try to be one now, but I've never really felt like I fit there. I used to watch you guys during Herbology, or out on the grounds and think that you'd care that I always try, that I always work my hardest, that I'm always loyal, even if I usually fall on my face when I try to do anything heroic. I mean, the greatest glory I've ever brought to Gryffindor before now was getting ten points for being Body-Bound by Harry, Ron, and Hermione as they went off to save the school." He pointed to the yellow and black badger banner hanging over the fire.

"I cried myself half sick when Cedric was killed. Don't ever think I don't respect you."

Ernie seemed as though he had been given a gift that he could not quite comprehend as he dipped his head towards Neville. "Thank you. Truly." Then he smiled. "And good to hear, as you are up to your eyes in us now."

Neville laughed. "I guess I am." He thought about it a moment. "How about you, Hannah, and two more from forth, fifth, and sixth years who are already D.A. come to the official meetings, and then you can have your own meetings inside Hufflepuff for everyone else? I'll get with Colin later tonight to extend the Fidelius Charm over the whole upper years for you."

"Well," Ginny broke in, "now that you boys have finished sorting out whose house has the bigger recruitment, have you given any thought to what this—" she tapped the Quibbler "—really means?"

Luna gave her a quizzical stare. "It means they're alive and fighting, of course, and that they set all those poor Muggle-borns free."

"That's all very nice, don't get me wrong, but they wouldn't have broken into the Ministry itself just for that. It says here that they took a locket from Umbridge, according to Mrs. Cattermole. When I found Harry by Dumbledore's body this spring, he had a locket in his hands. And at Grimmauld Place, there was a locket nobody could open... they had all kinds of weird Dark artifacts." Her eyes flashed vividly, and her small hand curled into a fist, striking against the table for emphasis. "It's too much to be a coincidence ... I bet they're the same one! We have got to know what's so important about that locket, so we can help them!"

"Did you get a chance to see what it looked like?" Neville asked.

She closed her eyes, screwing up her face in concentration before she spoke. "I only saw it clearly at Grimmauld Place. It was silver. Pretty good-sized. With a letter on the front. I think it was 'S'."

Luna's protuberant eyes widened. "Oooh, 'S' for Slytherin, maybe?"

"I doubt Harry wanted it because it stood for Seeker," Ernie said sarcastically.

"Slytherin, Seeker, Snargaluff, whatever ... why was Harry willing to risk everything to get it?" Neville stared at his hands as if he might find that he was accidentally holding the answer. "He's not going to defeat You-Know-Who by waving jewelry at him. It's got to have some magical function or property, or maybe there's something inside the locket he wants. What would be small enough to fit in a locket that could be that important?"

There was a long pause as they all considered this. Luna's mouth opened several times as if she were going to say something, but each time she stopped, shaking her head in dismissal before resuming her stare at the ceiling. Finally, Ginny spoke. Her voice sounded oddly hollow, and even in the warm light from the fire, her face was ashen. "Maybe not what. Maybe who."

Neville's expression of confusion was mirrored in the other two faces at the table. "Ginny?"

"The Chamber of Secrets. Harry never talked about what had happened because he didn't want me to get in trouble. There was a diary. It used to belong to Tom Riddle. That's who You-Know-Who was before he was You-Know-Who, only I didn't know that. I just thought it was a magic diary that had belonged to a really nice boy who wrote back to me when I wrote in it." She hid her face in her hands. "I was so stupid!"

Neville reached out and gently pulled her hands away from her face, taking her chin in his palm and turning her to face him. "You were eleven. Don't beat yourself up over what's past. Whatever happened because of that diary, no one was killed, or even permanently hurt in the whole Chamber business. Now, tell us why you think that the locket has something to do with the Chamber of Secrets ... or, I'm guessing, the Heir of Slytherin."

She took a deep breath, pulling back from his hand and tossing her hair defiantly as she pulled herself together again. "Tom Riddle was the Heir of Slytherin. He... he possessed me. Made me do things. It wasn't just his diary, it had a sort of living memory of him in it. Like a portrait, but stronger."

"And you think," Neville said slowly, "that the locket might have the same kind of memory in it?"

"Exactly. And I think ..." Ginny trailed off a moment, then when she began again, her voice was shaking, barely audible. "... oh, God, I think Harry is trying to get himself possessed."

Ernie swore. "Why would he do something that ..." Clearly at a loss for words, he swore again, and Neville found himself quite agreeing with the sentiment.

Ginny's eyes seemed to have gone utterly dead now, her voice toneless. "When his scar hurts him, he can see into You-Know-Who's mind. Luna, Neville, you remember: that's why he thought Sirius was at the Ministry. But it wasn't trustworthy. He tricked Harry. I think that Harry wants to get himself possessed to make the connection complete. Because with Dumbledore gone, the only wizard as strong as You-Know-Who is You-Know-Who. Harry is going to become him to stop him. If he has the locket, maybe he's already done it."

"I don't think so." Luna seemed amazingly calm in light of what Ginny had just said, even though Neville felt as though he'd been struck full in the face with a particularly well-hit Bludger. "I think you're right about the locket being some kind of memory-keeper, like the diary, but if Harry had already used it, he'd either have killed You-Know-Who or lost himself and joined him by now." "Unless," Ernie said quietly, "he did lose himself and Ron and Hermione had to kill him."

Neville shook his head quickly, forcing his voice to be strong and confident as he stood up. "No! We can't let ourselves start thinking that way ... there's too many 'ifs' there. If the locket is Slytherin's. If it's got a memory-thing in it. If Harry got possessed. If he couldn't handle that. There's at least four ifs before we get to Harry being dead, and I'm not going to believe that."

He looked at Ginny, who had pulled her knees up to her chest and sat huddled in her chair, looking very tiny indeed. "I'm with Luna as far as I think you're right about what the locket is, but I don't think Harry would take any chances of letting it possess him. If it's like a portrait of You-Know-Who, I think he would question it any way he could, that he'd want information from it, and then he'd destroy it. I don't think he's done it yet because we have what he needs to destroy it, and he doesn't want to let it out until he can."

"The Room of Requirement?" Luna asked.

"No. Ginny, how did he stop the Heir of Slytherin last time?" He looked around, his eyes gleaming wildly with the thrill of having, for once, put the pieces together himself. "Remember, he told us all the very first time the D.A. ever met. The Sword of Gryffindor! Harry needs the sword, and we have it here at Hogwarts!"

Ginny uncurled, leaning forward, hope flooding into her eyes even as the color returned to her cheeks. "You're right, Neville! It's the Sword! If he gets the Sword ... oh, and I bet that's what he has to have to kill him, too! Only the Sword of Gryffindor can defeat the Heir of Slytherin ... and You-Know-Who is the Heir!"

Ernie frowned. "But if Dumbledore had the Sword all those years, why not just take out You-Know- Who himself?"

"Only a true Gryffindor can wield the Sword," Luna informed them.

"Dumbledore told Professor Flitwick that he always considered himself very nearly a Ravenclaw. It's something Professor Flitwick's always felt proud about and reminded us. Maybe it kept him from being able to use the Sword, though."

"Maybe." Neville agreed. "But it means that sooner or later, Harry is going to come back to Hogwarts for the Sword, and that's when we're going to have to fight. I mean, even if Harry takes out You-Know-Who himself, I don't intend to just let Snape and the Carrows and—" Bellatrix Lestrange, he thought. "And all the Death Eaters walk free, or just assume they'll let Harry walk up to You-Know-Who and say 'Hey, I have something here, let's see if it'll kill you.' "

"I wonder," mused Luna, "how he's going to get in? Polyjuice Potion won't get him through all the security into Hogwarts. All the secret passages are sealed. The Death Eaters know all about the Vanishing Cabinets. And I bet there's extra security on the Headmaster's office."

"Blimey—" Neville let out a low groan, sinking back into his chair.

"That's lovely. It's in Snape's office."

"So?" asked Ernie stubbornly.

"Well, it's not going to be a cakewalk for him to get in there," Ginny said.

"Then we help. That's what we're here for, if I'm not mistaken." The Hufflepuff had crossed his arms again, planting himself in the chair as though someone were going to try and physically force him to back down.

"But," Ginny protested, "breaking into Snape's office? That'll take weeks of planning if we want half a chance of pulling it off!"

"So it takes weeks. Or months." Ernie shrugged. "We work from the inside, he works from the outside, and whoever gets to the Sword first, it's all for the better. Either Harry already has a plan, or we have a rather lovely present for him when he shows up thinking he'll still have half the job ahead of him." He glanced across the table. "Neville, you're our leader, the final word is yours. What shall we do about the Sword?"

Neville did not hesitate. "We get it. You're right, we take as long as we need to, and we use that time to train ourselves into fighters, because Harry could show up any day now, and this isn't just about defensive magic any more. I'm going to ask Dobby to find out everything he can about the security on Snape's office, that's a start." He reached for the quill and started to make notes on the parchment in front of him. "Luna, I want you to get the Ravenclaws on two things: first, every spell you can find that we could use on the Death Eaters that they'll have never heard of. Arcane, foreign, outright bizarre, whatever ... as long as they're workable. If you want us to attack them with Crinkly-Horned Snorkles—"

"Crumple-Horned Snorkacks," Luna corrected him, a bit snippily.

"Crumple-Horned Snorkacks. That's fine with me as long as you can produce one and show us how to aim the blasted thing. Second, anything you can get about Slytherin having a locket." He turned to Ginny. "I want anything we can get to try and sort out what Harry's up to. This has been his

house, and he's been a celebrity since before he got here. You're a girl, so you should be even more suited to this. I want every rumor, every piece of gossip, every hint of anything that has gone around about him for the last six years. Anything people have seen, heard, read, or been told. And I want you to sift through that as someone who actually knows him and see if you can filter out anything that could help us get inside that scarred head of his and help him."

Ginny grinned rather wolfishly, and he had the feeling his orders were going to be used to settle a few private scores. "With pleasure."

Neville paused, noting the assignments on the parchment, then turned to his last Lieutenant. "Ernie, I'm going to be honest with you ... the only reason Slytherin had the Quidditch Cup all those years before we had Harry as Seeker is because they play dirty. You guys always turn out the best athletes."

"There is nothing," Ernie pointed out, "glorious, cunning, or particularly learned about a pushup."

"Exactly. And fighting is about just as much running and ducking as it is Hexing and Charms." Neville swallowed his pride with some difficulty and took a pinch of his own waist to demonstrate his point to the other boy. "I'm not the chubby little kid I used to be, but I'm not in that great of shape either. A lot of us aren't. I want Hufflepuff to whip us into fighting trim. No one needs to die because they were too out of breath to cast a Shield Charm."

Ernie leaned back, stretching his own brawny arms in front of him and cracking his knuckles. "I hope you're prepared to be rather sore, dear chum."

Neville looked down at the list in front of him. At the top, the words Get Gryffindor's Sword seemed to mock him. It seemed so easy just written there. He looked up again, meeting Ernie's eyes as a great wave of exhaustion seemed to crash over him. "Ernie, being sore is the least of my problems now."

"She's not human, I swear. Absolute heart of stone." Lavender Brown gave the chocolate gateau in the center of the table a look of the deepest longing, then sighed, staring down at the apple that sat forlornly in the middle of her plate. "I mean, maybe I'm not going out for the Holier-than-thou- head Harpies any time soon like some people think they are, but there's nothing wrong with me, either."

Parvati nodded, slicing her own apple in half with unnecessary violence. "Neville, she's a monster. She made us do situps and jumping jacks until I thought I was going to die. I was dripping sweat. Harry never made us do anything like that!"

Neville glanced around, then gave the two of them a warning look as he pulled out his wand beneath the table. "Muffliato." Satisfied that the charm was in place, he leaned forward. "Could you please keep the whinging down? Harry was teaching us what to do if we found ourselves in a bad situation. That's not the same as being at war. We're not trying to get out of a fight alive, we're planning to start one and last as long as we can in it. And I'm not sympathetic. Rowan Glynnis is taking it easy on you."

"You weren't there," Lavender announced in a martyred tone.

"No, I was with Bagman and the rest of the blokes. I'd be happy to switch. Look—" He held up his goblet in one hand, and the pumpkin juice almost sloshed over the edge. "—I'm still shaking. Did either of you need to tie your shoes with magic this morning because you were too sore to bend over?"

Neither girl answered, though he was quite sure he heard Parvati mutter something under her breath that involved what she would like to do if he bent over. Ignoring her, Neville sat back, being sure to not even glance at the pyramid of cream puffs heaped tantalizingly in front of him as he reached past them for an orange. He was their leader, and it wouldn't do to show that he was having second, third, and even fourth thoughts of his own. There was something insult to injury about laying your life on the line in noble resistance also meaning that you had to turn down custard tarts and toffee pudding.

His bitter musings were interrupted by the sound of a throat clearing at the staff table. Neville looked up as the entire room fell stonily silent. Professor Snape got to his feet, sweeping his black robe around him like a regal mantle. Neville's hands clenched into fists, and he felt a vein begin to pulse in his temple. The sight of Snape at the throne-like Headmaster's chair—Dumbledore's chair— still filled him with a choking rage.

He took what comfort he could in the rigid postures and disapproving glares of the other teachers. Only the Carrows, themselves seeming thuggishly out of place at the staff table, looked anything other than incensed, and Neville allowed the tiniest of bitter smiles. It's not just us. They know what you are, you filthy traitor. They know, and one of these days, we'll all make you pay. They're not afraid of you, it's You-Know-Who that scares them. Even I'm not afraid of you any more, because I've realized you're a coward. You'll terrorize kids and murder a defenseless old man in cold blood, but you ran when you had to confront what you'd done. You ran and hid behind your Master, and now you'll only face us because he's got your back.

"Silence." The order was unneeded. Although the waves of hate rolling up from the students were almost palpable, no one seemed to have even breathed since Snape stood. He looked down his hooked nose at the assemblage, his lip curling into a familiar sneer. "Well, apparently, it does not take long for gratitude to wear thin. Only a little more than one week into the school year, and already the Carrows and Mr. Filch tell such tales. Tsk tsk. The Dark Lord values your education more highly than you do, it would seem."

His black eyes swept over their faces, settling at the Gryffindor table. For one horrible moment, Neville thought that they were staring directly at him, that he somehow knew, but then he realized that they were focused on Seamus, only two places to his left.

"Mr. Finnigan showed profound disrespect in Muggle Studies. Miss Lovegood"—the dark gaze turned to the Ravenclaw table—"thought she would favor her classmates with a very unflattering artistic rendition of her Dark Arts teacher, which was intercepted and destroyed. And the younger Mr. Creevey"—Dennis shrunk down on his seat as Snape found him—"seems to think that he has a talent for mimicking me in the corridors. And this does not even begin to address the overall lax attitude that the Carrows report being shown toward the subjects that the Dark Lord himself has personally chosen for you to study."

Snape strode around the staff table to stand in front, one long, sallow hand tapping his wand into his other palm. "Your Heads of House have assured me that they will address these matters, but in my years here as a teacher, I have observed a certain ..." he cast a distinctly nasty look at Professor McGonagall, who bristled, her lips vanishing in a thin line of fury, "inability on their part to control those students who are determined to misbehave. Professors Alecto and Amycus Carrow will therefore be handling all matters of discipline here at Hogwarts from now on. I believe you will find them far more ..." He paused, then smiled humorlessly. "Motivating."

Behind him, the Carrows stood, and Neville shivered at the toothy leers they gave. There was pain in those smiles. "All of you," Snape went on, "are here because you carry true magical blood. This school may have been allowed to run riot in the past, but the Dark Lord has higher expectations. I suggest you live up to them."

He waved his wand, and the plates and goblets disappeared, leaving the tables bare. A few first- years who had not yet finished let out cries of dismay, but they were quickly hushed by the older students at their tables, and Neville thought he saw a flicker of triumph cross Snape's face as he resumed his seat. "You may go back to your dormitories now. Some of you have Dark Arts tomorrow. I recommend you take the time to study."

There was no sound but the scraping of benches and the shuffling of hundreds of feet as the students made their way out of the Great Hall, but the moment they crossed the threshold, whispered conversations broke out so furiously that it sounded as though a swarm of bees had been waiting for them. Seamus was at Neville's side in an instant. "The Carrows handle discipline? Is he mad? They'll make Umbridge look like a fairy princess!"

Neville nodded gravely. "If we're lucky."

"What do we do?" Colin had pushed his way through the crowd, one arm wrapped protectively around his younger brother's shoulders. Dennis was trembling and looked as though he might be sick at any moment. "We can't let him get away with this!"

"There's no choice. He's the Headmaster; if he thinks that discipline needs to be tightened, he can choose whoever he wants to do it. It's his right, whether or not we like it. I mean, we're just kids." Colin gaped at him as though he had uttered a terrible obscenity, but Neville jerked his head slightly towards a handful of green-robed fifth-years that had clustered by the staircase only a few paces away. Slytherins, he mouthed, and was relieved to see understanding dawn on his friends' faces as he continued loudly. "We'll simply have to behave ourselves."

"I'll practice my puckering up," said Seamus wryly.

"Just be careful." Ginny had joined them, and she kept her voice low as they moved up the stairs past the lingering Slytherins. "If you're planning to kiss Alecto's arse, you'll have to look twice to make sure you're not aiming for her face."

Neville started to laugh, then clamped his hand over his mouth, his body shaking as he held it back, every sore muscle aching with the effort. Finally, shaking his head, he managed to gasp out, "Ginny, I think I know why Harry fell for you."

She gave a cheeky grin, tossing her hair and pretending to preen her reflection as they passed a window. "Oh, I don't know. I think he just likes living dangerously."

Seamus grinned back at her. "You mean the six overprotective twits you call brothers, or just yourself?"

"I'm more than you can handle, Finnigan," she shot back.

He raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. "Love, I may mouth off at the Carrows, but I don't fancy myself brave enough to argue with you."

Neville allowed the laugh this time, and it almost seemed like old times again as he listened to them banter back and forth while they climbed the stairs to the familiar portrait that covered the entrance to Gryffindor Tower. The Fat Lady looked as nervous as she had since school began, and the moment she saw them coming, she shooed away the pinch-faced witch in medieval robes whom she had been whispering with. "Password?" she asked with stiff-backed propriety.

"Blood Status," Neville said, exchanging a distasteful little glance with her as she swung open and revealed the entry.

As soon as the portrait hole had shut behind them, Gryffindors seemed to materialize from everywhere at once, and Neville found himself surrounded, the babble of fifty voices rendering any individual question, outburst, or demand utterly meaningless. He spread his hands desperately, shouting to make himself heard. "Whoa! Everybody calm down! Back off! I can't listen to all of you at the same time!"

The outcry faded away, and he took a step forward away from the portrait hole, grabbing a chair and dropping into it backwards, his elbows resting on the back as he ran his fingers through his hair. "I know what's going on. We all heard it. I just have to think."

He closed his eyes, feeling once again like he had never given Harry enough credit for how hard it was to simply have so many people looking at you. They expected him to have answers instantly, and for everything, as if the past six years of utterly dismissing him had never happened. Everything's changed so much, he thought bemusedly, I guess it's not that big a deal to have the house loser suddenly in charge.

Finally, he opened his eyes again and looked up, taking a deep breath as he saw that everyone had formed a circle around him, waiting as if for some grand revelation. The idea that had formed seemed pathetically feeble in the face of all their expectations, but it was all he had. "I'm going to have to find out for myself what this really means."

Ginny frowned, two thin vertical lines of worry appearing between her brows. "Neville, I really hope you aren't planning to get in trouble on purpose."

"It's the only way." He shrugged, but his voice was firm. "We can sit here and speculate all we want, but we can't really decide what to do about this until we know what it actually means that the Carrows are going to be handling discipline. I mean, who could have guessed what Umbridge was going to do? We know what happens when Alecto loses her temper," he gestured at Seamus, "but not when they're planning it. It could just be awful detentions like Snape gives, or it could be

getting horsewhipped by Filch, or anything, really. We can't know until it happens to someone, and we can't decide what to do about it until we know."

The younger students gazed at him with a mixture of horror and awe, but it was the uncomfortable looks exchanged among the sixth- and seventh-years that told Neville he was right. Finally, Lavender shook her head. "I don't know. What if it's something terrible?"

"I don't expect it to be a hundred lines of 'I will be a good little minion' and then tea and biscuits," he retorted.

"You can't." It was Parvati who spoke, and although her voice was soft, there was a finality to it that carried across the outbreak of muttering that had come behind his last statement. She took a step forward, and Neville felt a chill as he saw that everything in her bearing had changed. Her head was held high, the firelight shining off her skin like a bronze statue as she seemed to glide into the center of the ring of Gryffindors to stand next to him.

"If you do it, Neville, we won't really know what the Carrows will do to the rest of us. You were at the Ministry, you were at the tower, your parents were Aurors. They'll come down on you hard, no matter what. It has to be someone who's never been in trouble with them before." Each syllable was clearly enunciated with a sickening decisiveness. "Like me."

Neville shook his head. "No, I won't let you."

She turned on him, her eyes flashing with sudden ferocity. "Why?"

He floundered, trying to explain what seemed so obvious that he couldn't find the words. "Well, you're—"

"If you're going to say 'a girl', then why don't you go fetch Hermione from wherever you've been keeping her safe?" Parvati spat. "Or for that matter, tell Alecto Carrow or Bellatrix LeStrange that they're supposed to be sheltered and dainty."

The mention of Bellatrix sent a hot flush into Neville's cheeks, but he bit his lip, looking down at the carpet to avoid the intensity of Parvati's stare. Feeling cornered, he glanced around the faces of his classmates, but it only made the growing certainty that she was right intensify. The thought of using one of the younger kids was too repellant to contemplate, and all of the seventh-year Gryffindors that remained had, as she had pointed out, reasons to draw unusual fury down on themselves. The only other possibility that he could see was Lavender, and she had not volunteered. Slowly, reluctantly, he nodded, and his voice was a rough whisper when he finally spoke. "All right."

"Good." Parvati gave a grim smile. "But everyone had better behave themselves tomorrow. I want to stand out."

The Dark Arts class had been in session for ten minutes with no sign of Parvati, and Neville had not heard a word that Carrow had told them about creating Inferi. Normally, no matter his distaste for the subject, the sight of a corpse on the teacher's desk would have been more than enough to hold

his attention, but he was utterly preoccupied with a growing hope that she would not show up. He didn't think she would have chickened out, but maybe something at breakfast had made her sick? Maybe she had sprained an ankle on a trick step?

He had just made up his mind to pay attention enough to think of something infuriating to say when the door burst open. Parvati breezed in as though she hadn't a care in the world, plopping her bag onto the desk and taking her customary seat next to Lavender Brown.

She swept a stray tendril of hair out of her eyes and looked up at Carrow with wide-eyed innocence. "Sorry I'm late, Professor," she said airily, "I have all my important classes written down, but I just forgot about Dark Whatsits."

Amycus Carrow seemed to inflate with fury for a moment, then the redness that had begun to creep up from his collar receded, and he fingered his wand almost lovingly. "No, Miss Patil, I oughta thank you," he sneered. "Fer lettin' me demonstrate to the class jes' how serious Professor Snape is about maintainin' order in his school."

For the first time, Parvati noticed the dead body at the head of the classroom, and her eyes flickered to the pictures still on the wall from Professor Snape's tenure the year before. The bloody mass that he had indicated as the wrath of the Inferi writhed pathetically in its frame, and she turned a sickly greenish shade, genuine fear reflected in her eyes as Carrow advanced across the room.

Neville wanted to look away, but he couldn't, fixated by the terror that he felt radiating from every other Gryffindor there. What have I done? he thought desperately. I should never have let her ... what have I DONE?

After what seemed like an age, Carrow reached the petrified witch and extended his wand. She closed her eyes, her hands tightening on the edge of the desk, but he only placed it beneath her chin obscenely gently as he raised her face to him. "Let's see ..." His coarse voice was a terrible purr. "Mister ... Nott."

Parvati's eyes opened, staring up at Carrow in confusion as the Slytherin stood, bowing obsequiously. "Yes, sir?"

"I don't like wastin' the chance ta teach." He didn't break eye contact with Parvati as he raised the wand to caress her cheek. "Miss Patil can learn 'bout punctuality, and you can practice one of the three Primary Curses. I don't reckon Imperio's what we need here, Avada Kedavra might be a bit extreme, but I think Crucio's 'zactly what she needs to help her remember 'Dark Whatsits.' "

Nott's thin face gleamed with sadistic pleasure as he pushed up the sleeves of his robe and drew his wand. "Yes, sir!"

Everything had taken on a horrible air of unreality. As if in a dream, Neville watched helplessly as Nott advanced on Parvati, still held frozen in place at the tip of Carrow's wand. Then the Slytherin snapped his wand at her and shouted the curse, and he closed his eyes. Parvati screamed. It was the worst sound Neville had ever heard in his life. High and shrill, it cut into him as though the pain were his own. It went on and on. Each shriek crested like a scarlet wave before spending itself into thin, razored gasps of agony, and then the screams rasped away as her voice broke, and now there

were other sounds: hisses and anguished breaths punctuated by the dull clatter of flesh flailing uselessly against wood and stone.

He couldn't look. Already, he felt as though he were teetering on the edge of losing his mind. It hadn't been this bad when Seamus was being tortured. He too had gone into it knowingly, but there had been a difference there, and it wasn't just the difference between boy and girl. Seamus had approached it out of his own bravado. Parvati was their sacrificial lamb, and each scream was an accusation, a condemnation of his failure as a leader to find another way, any other way.

The sounds faded to a silence so thick it felt like a tangible thing, oily and dirty against his skin. Then Carrow laughed, and it was too much. Neville leaned over, barely managing to clear the edge of his desk as he was violently, brutally sick.

"Calm down, mate. A person'd think Parvati was up there havin' your baby to look at you." Seamus spoke soothingly, but his only reward was a dirty glare as Neville continued to pace the Gryffindor common room in long, rapid strides, running his hands through his hair every few passes as if he could push the sounds of Parvati's screams out of his memory.

"It'd be less my fault if she was." He cast another longing look at the entrance to the girls' dormitory, hating the charm that kept him locked out. "Isn't there any way I can get up there?"

"Guys have been tryin' for centuries." The other boy shook his head regretfully. "Not a chance."

"Why did they have to hide her away like that?" Neville made no attempt to hide the anguish in his voice. "I just want to know if she's all right!"

"It was no big deal strippin' me down to my shorts to check me over," Seamus pointed out gently, "but girls are a bit touchier about things.

She pounded against that chair something wicked, and Ginny and them'll have to take her to what she was born with or at least to knickers to make sure they've got her properly taken care of."

Neville stopped his pacing at the closed door, staring at it as though he could discover what was happening on the other side by sheer force of will. The door remained mockingly opaque, and he slammed his fists against it, rattling the hinges and sending a small cluster of first and second-years scurrying for cover. "It's my fault! It's all my fault!" He struck the door again, reveling in the pain that shot through his arms and shoulders at the impact.

"Hey, now." Hands had grabbed him by the upper arms now, pulling him back, and Neville twisted in his friend's grasp, infuriated to find that Seamus was much stronger than he had imagined from someone half a head shorter and a good thirty pounds lighter than himself.

"Let go! Let go before I—"

"Do somethin' really stupid, I know." Neville twisted to reach his wand, but his arms were pinned behind him now, and he could only thrash uselessly.

"Now, don't make me take you down." The voice in his ear was all the more enraging for its calm, and Neville let out a roar of fury and summoned all his strength, throwing off the restraining hold and whirling around, wand at the ready.

He had not even steadied his aim before the jet of light hit him full in the chest. "Petrificus Totalus!"

The all-too-familiar sensation of complete immobility seized him, and Neville crashed to the ground, unable to so much as twitch a finger as Seamus leaned over him. "I didn't want to do that, mate, but you'd bloody lost it, and I couldn't have you raisin' enough ruckus to bring the Carrows in."

Neville hoped that his eyes could convey the filthy names running through his head, but Seamus seemed to guess them well enough. "I'm goin' to take this," he felt his wand slip from his stiffened fingers, "and then I'm goin' to count ten and release the Body Bind, and we're goin' to deal with this like grown men and wizards, not Bludger-headed giants. The last thing Parvati needs is to hear you carryin' on down here. She's liable to think the battle's started without her. All right? One ... two ..."

At ten, Seamus waved the two wands together, and Neville felt a sense of freedom return to his body. He flexed his fingers, satisfied to feel them responding to his command again, and then pushed himself to a sitting position. He had expected to want to throttle Seamus, but it seemed as though all the fight had drained out of him as the ability to move had poured back in, and all it had left behind was a horrible void like a gaping, bleeding wound. Shaking, he ran a hand over his face, startled to feel that it was slick with sweat. "I ... I'm sorry," he managed.

"No worries." The sandy head tilted curiously. "Did you go that nuts when I was down? I might be flattered."

"You did it to yourself, you moron." Neville allowed himself the faintest ghost of a smile. "Why would I feel bad about that?"

"True enough."

He got up, contemplating resuming pacing again for a long moment before simply dropping onto the nearest couch in defeat. "I don't get it."

"What?"

"How you can be so calm." Neville motioned towards the closed door. "You were there too. You saw, you heard ..." He couldn't finish.

"Dean." Seamus sat down on the arm of the couch and handed back the confiscated wand as he explained. "Dean's my best mate, and he's always been the one in our year with the most plain horse sense, as Mum called it. I was ready to go flyin' off at Carrow myself, but then you sicked all over, and it was like I could hear him in my head. 'Seamus,' he said, 'Neville's not takin' this well, and he's the best hope all of you've got. What's done to Parvati's done, but you'd better watch out for him, or you're all as good as wandless.' That helped, odd enough. Gave me somethin' to do, and

the helpless bit is always the worst. So Ginny and the girls are seein' to Parvati, and I'm here preventin' our fearless leader from tearin' down the castle."

"I'm not your leader anymore. I'm disbanding the D.A.." He sat up and fished in his pocket for the fake Galleon, flinging it across the room without looking at it.

"You can't!" The shock in the other boy's voice gave Neville a dark pleasure, and he felt guiltily pleased that he had finally broken the maddening composure. "This time last week, you're sayin' we've got to be ready to die, and now you're givin' up because one person got punished?!"

"He had her Cruciated." Neville turned, gesturing fiercely towards the girl's dorm. "Cruciated for something that Snape would have taken fifty points for on his worst days. I can't make you all go through that!"

Seamus' cheeks were flushed, and his blue eyes glinted defiantly. "Speak for yourself; I've had it done, and I'll take it again if need be!"

"I've had it too! And I know what it can do better than you! There's things worse than death, Finnigan! There's things you don't even—"

He broke off, and a long silence lingered between them before he could force himself to speak again as he stared into the common room fire. They had the room to themselves now, the few other students having long fled, but he still kept his voice low, barely above a whisper. "I wasn't raised by my Gran because my parents are dead. I've just let people think that."

"I don't—"

"They were tortured by Death Eaters. Cruciated until they lost their minds. They've been in St. Mungo's for sixteen years now. They don't even know who they are. They don't even know who I am. I'm not going to see that happen to any of my friends because I have to prove I'm a great, heroic Gryffindor after all."

"Bloody hell." Seamus slid off the arm of the couch to sit closer to Neville, placing one hand gingerly on his friend's back. "That's ..."

"That's why I'm disbanding the D.A.," Neville said firmly. "I couldn't live with that."

"Fair enough." There was a long pause, and then Seamus spoke again. "But if we're comin' clean about things, I'd ask you to listen to why I'm going to keep fightin', whether or not you disband Dumbledore's Army."

Neville nodded, not sure if he was unable or just unwilling to say anything more.

"When you go home, you go home to two parents who don't know you, and that's a terrible thing. But they're at peace in whatever place they've gone to inside their heads, sure as if they were dead. I don't go home to peace. I go home to Belfast. Pipe bombs and assassins in the night. You- Know-Who is full of hate, and I know what hate does." Seamus' voice choked, and when he continued, there was a desperation in his words, almost a pleading.

"If we let this keep on, as soon as he's done with the Muggle-borns, he'll move on to the Muggle world in whole, and when he's done with that, it'll be Half-Bloods, and then he'll find somethin' else to hate, and somethin' after that. People who're driven by hate never have peace, and they never allow it. I know. I'm Irish, and that means I root for a Quidditch team with leprechaun mascots, but it also means that for me, this isn't the world going to war, it's just war coming into the part of my life I thought knew better. You say there are worse things than death, and I couldn't agree with you more. I just don't agree about what they are."

"Harry's going to stop him." Neville waved a hand towards the window. "He's out there now, following some kind of plan that he and Dumbledore had. They were locked up together half of last year. He knows what he's doing, and he doesn't need us."

"Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't." Seamus shrugged. "But I know that I need to be able to look myself in the mirror when all this is said and done, and I don't reckon I could do that if I just sat on my thumbs ... and I've known you for nearly seven years, whether or not I knew about your parents, and I don't think you could, either."

Neville opened his mouth to protest, but before he could say anything, there was the sound of a door opening behind him, and both wizards jumped to their feet, turning just in time to see Ginny step into the common room. She looked tired, and several strands of red hair dangled limply in her face, but she was smiling. "It's okay."

"Parvati—" The two boys spoke at the same time, and she raised a hand, cutting them off.

"Parvati's going to be just fine. She's much better off than you were, Seamus. Alecto got a lot more creative than just Crucio, but this was just some bad bruising from when she was thrashing around. That awful smelly green goop Neville made cleared it all up like it had never happened. She'll be down in a few minutes. I tried to tell her to rest, but she wants everyone to see that there was no serious harm done."

His knees felt as though she had hit him with a Jelly-Legs Jinx, and Neville sank to the floor, bracing himself with one hand. "She's not ..."

Ginny's brown eyes were soft with deep understanding. "No. She's not. And she's not mad at you, either. I think she's actually going to be a little insufferable for a while. Really feels like she's proven her own, you know?"

"Yeah." The word came out weakly, and he shook his head, trying to wrap his mind around the idea that Parvati was all right. Ginny's words and the truth in her expression fought bitterly with the echoes of the screams from only hours before.

"What do you say, Neville?" Seamus turned to him, a challenge gleaming in the blue eyes. "Does she get a medal at the next D.A. meetin'?"

He paused for what seemed like years before answering, his eyes fixed on the warm yellow glint of the Galleon that lay in the corner of the room where he had thrown it. At last he answered, though he was unable to meet either pair of eyes that he could feel looking at him. "No. Don't want everyone else doing it ... I'll let her out of training for a few days, though."

"That's the least you can do." Parvati sounded raw, as though she was getting over a bad bout of laryngitis, but there was a smile on her face as she came down the stairs. Her steps were a little hesitant, she leaned on the railing a little more than usual, but otherwise, she seemed to have just woken up from a nap, her dark hair cascading loosely over her shoulders and her arms revealing not so much as a single bruise in her sleeveless nightgown.

"Parvati!" Neville dashed across the room, unable to help himself as he swept her up in an enormous hug that lifted her completely off her feet. He spun her around, and she laughed like a child, clinging to his neck in a grip that was wonderfully, giddily sure and real and healthy and sane and whole and alive. Setting her down, he felt his breath catch in his throat as he looked at her, just looked at her, drinking her in as though the reality of her being there could drown the memory of her torture.

He hadn't destroyed her after all. She was looking at him now through bright, clear eyes, and she was fine, more than fine. She was beautiful.

Neville felt a strange clutching sensation in his chest, and he was suddenly aware that he was holding a girl in his arms, her small, delicate body close against his, her skin warm and soft beneath his hands. He had never particularly noticed girls before, had even wondered occasionally if there was something wrong with him as every other boy in his year had lost his mind over them to various degrees, but he abruptly understood what all the fuss was about. Parvati was the most beautiful thing he had ever laid eyes on, and it was the most natural thing in the world to tighten his arms around her, bringing her in and lowering his head to catch her lips with his.

The kiss was awkward at first, his nose bumping up against hers, but she seemed to know what she was doing more than he did, and she tilted her head, bringing her hand up to slide her fingers through his hair and pull his mouth onto hers. Then it became deeper, more passionate, and Neville's head seemed to spin with the wonderful insanity of it all. His mind and heart and body were flying apart at the seams with more new sensations than he could even begin to deal with. When they finally broke apart, he gasped, his eyes wide. "Parvati ..."

She smiled, and placed a single finger over his mouth. "Thank you."

He blinked, aware that he was grinning stupidly and that he shouldn't be. "For what? You were tortured."

"You let me prove I can take it. I've been afraid I couldn't. My parents have always protected me, and I've been afraid that when it came time to fight, I would break. I know I won't now, and you let me do that. It must have been so hard for you ... I could hear you down here yelling."

He nodded dumbly. "I couldn't forgive myself for letting them hurt you."

"There's nothing to forgive." Her hand traced down and settled on his chest over his heart. "I know I have courage now, but it took courage for you to send me, too. You're going to be a great leader, I think."

Neville thought of the Galleon, abandoned in despair. He thought of how he had wanted to let it all go, of how he had wanted to give up, to leave the fight to others, and he dropped his eyes in shame. "No ..."

Then she kissed him again, and again everything else melted away. His skin had taken on a life of its own, a pulsing, hungry thing, and he had never really realized how much he had changed, how much they all had changed over the years since coming to Hogwarts. It was a man's body he wore now, tall and broad-shouldered, his stubbled chin scraping lightly against her face as they kissed, and somehow he had missed that she was no longer a little girl, but a woman whose body was made of endless curves that his hands now traced through the thin nightgown.

They were adults now, adults and soldiers who still had to be children and students, and this was war, and this was hell, and this was heaven, and he was a victim and a leader and terrified and fearless and everything—everything was different than it ever had been before. Neville knew that he had turned some kind of corner in that moment, and whatever happened from now on, none of the old rules about how he thought things were or who he thought he was were going to matter. He would have to find out from scratch, and somehow, that didn't seem as terrifying as he thought it should have been.

Everything was different now. He was different. The worst had happened, he had sent someone to suffer the Cruciatus Curse, and the world had not ended. Instead, it had begun. He had grown up.


	6. Chapter 5: Cat and Mouse

"Are you sure they're down, Dobby?"

The little elf nodded enthusiastically, his large ears flapping. "Yes, sir. We put the potion in their drinks just like you told us to, and they're all sleeping most soundly. Professor Snape fell asleep right on his desk!"

"I still wish we had Harry's map," Ginny muttered.

Neville shrugged dismissively. "We all wish a lot of things, but we're going to have to make do. Now, let's go over things one more time." He looked around at the circle of faces, then tapped his wand against the map of the school spread out on the table in front of him. "Does everyone know what names and classrooms they're taking?"

There were nods all around, and Neville made a small, satisfied noise, then held up his fake Galleon. "Something goes wrong, don't try to solve it. Squeeze it twice and get out of there. It'll turn cold for the rest of us, and that means one team has aborted and we have to be on alert. If something goes really wrong and you get caught or are about to, squeeze it four times, and it'll heat up for the rest of us—"

"—And that means we all run back to our common rooms like we had a herd of dragons on our heels," finished Lavender.

"Exactly. Now, there's fourteen pairs of us, and only the two Carrows and Snape. Even if you count in Filch on their side, that means no matter what, twenty of us will get away. Those are good numbers, so please," he cast an imploring look at his fellow Gryffindors in particular, "no one get any ideas about trying to rescue each other if you feel the Galleon heat up. Just run. Hopefully, nothing goes wrong, but if it does, we need to save as many people as possible to keep fighting them. Please."

After a reluctant pause, a murmured chorus of 'yes' and 'all right' broke out, and he took a deep breath as he stood up from his chair, reaching into the pocket of his robes for his scarf, no longer striped with the crimson and gold of Gryffindor, but solid black. "Everyone remember to cover your faces, just in case. And take your time with the Flagrate ... we want those names carved in good and deep. These last ten days have really taken a toll on morale, and we don't want them to be able to erase what we've done before everyone's had a chance to remember what's really at stake. Ginny, do you have the Garbling Gum?"

Ginny dug into her pocket and dumped a large fistful of brightly wrapped sweets onto the table, each emblazoned with the bold "W" of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. "It'll last about an hour," she informed them, "but if you spit it out, your voice goes back to normal instantly. It doesn't taste all that bad, either. Sort of a cinnamon-minty flavor."

They each took a piece, and as he popped it into his mouth, there was a bizarre fizzing sensation, as though he had just sucked the foam off a flagon of butterbeer. When he spoke again, his voice sounded as if he were talking through a mouth organ; tinny and unnatural, neither male nor female and utterly unrecognizable. "Let's get ready, then." He checked his watch. "We move out in five minutes."

There was a flurry of activity as all around him, people made last-second checks of wands, belts, and shoelaces, wrapping scarves around their faces and unwrapping gum. Neville was pleased to see that no one looked afraid, and although his own heart was pounding, it really seemed more out of excitement than fear. It felt good to be doing this, striking out and taking a real action after almost three weeks of this new, sick parody of the school they all loved. He grinned as he imagined the looks on the faces of Snape and the Carrows in the morning when they discovered that every single classroom and the Great Hall had been emblazoned with the names of the missing, the banished, the 'undesirable' and 'impure' that they all missed so much.

He wrapped the scarf around his face, checking in the large full-length mirrors that the Room of Requirement had sprouted for the occasion to ensure that nothing but his eyes were visible. Neville made sure the knot was tight so that it wouldn't slip down if he had to move quickly, then double- checked his partner, Ernie Macmillan, before submitting to the same scrutiny. There was no room for error here. They all knew that with the Cruciatus Curse being used so freely—a dozen times in ten days, and twice on helpless little first-years!—the penalty for getting caught at something like this did not bear thinking about.

At last, with a minute to go, they were all ready. Neville shivered as he surveyed the two neat lines. They no longer bore any resemblance to the underground study group they had once been. A Chromomorphus Charm had turned their uniforms solid black, erasing any sign of house allegiance, and their faces and hair were completely hidden by scarves and the hoods of their robes. The eyes that burned out at him were hard and fiercely determined, and he nodded in satisfaction before jabbing his wand towards the ceiling. "Dumbledore's Army!"

Twenty-seven wands joined him, and the echo of the battle cry, eerie and inhuman from more than two dozen voices disguised by the magical cunning of the Weasley twins, rang through the secret room as silver sparks shot into the air. They all met in the center of the ceiling in a single, vivid burst of light that was dazzling, even blinding in its intensity.

When the last of the glare had finally faded away, the room was empty. They had vanished like ghosts into the darkness. The mission had begun. Dumbledore's Army was on the move.

Neville had never been out in the corridors this late at night before. He and Ernie didn't dare light their wands, afraid of waking unfriendly portraits or alerting some patrol that Dobby hadn't known to warn them of. In the near-total darkness, the only light spilling thinly from the crescent moon in occasional windows they passed, the familiar halls became utterly alien. Everything seemed to echo horribly, every breath, every cautious footfall impossibly loud, and he was certain that they must be making enough noise to rouse the entire castle, even though he knew otherwise.

By the time they reached the doors of the Great Hall, he could feel sweat running down the back of his neck inside his robes. It itched, but he refused to stop and remove his hood to scratch. Even with the scarf still wrapped snugly around his face, it felt like bad luck. They paused at the doors, and Neville made eye contact with Ernie, motioning silently at the hinges.

His Lieutenant nodded in understanding, and Neville raised three fingers, counting down and then flicking his wand at the huge brass hinges, concentrating with all his might on the silencing charm. He had never been great with non-verbal spells, and he crossed his fingers as they each took hold of a handle. Holding his breath, Neville pulled, and he had to stop himself from letting out a sigh of relief as the huge doors gave way without the slightest squeak or groan.

They opened the doors just enough to allow themselves to slip inside, closing them again the moment they were through. Ernie tilted his head at the bolt, a question in his eyes, but Neville shook his head. If they had to run, he didn't want to have to remember to unlock their only escape route.

The Great Hall was usually the center of activity at Hogwarts. In addition to being packed with students and staff three times a day for meals, people could always be found at the four long tables, gathering to study, read their mail, or simply socialize and exchange gossip with friends from other houses. It was like one big common room, sunlit or glowing with the warm flicker of candles bobbing above the tables, flagons of pumpkin juice and trays of tea and coffee always at hand along with whatever snacks the house elves had cooked up for the day.

Now, however, the room was utterly deserted, the tables bare; heavy and medieval-looking rather than sturdy and welcoming. The charmed ceiling was dark, forbidding, the slivered moon sliding in and out behind thick clouds that hid the stars completely. At the end of the Hall, seemingly miles away, the staff table stood like a judge's bench, staring down at them across the huge, terribly exposed expanse of stone floor.

Taking a deep breath, Neville motioned to Ernie, and the two boys split up, crouching low and scurrying almost on hands and knees along the edges of the room beneath the tall windows. When they finally met at the far end of the Hall behind the staff table, he felt as though they had been reunited after a long and perilous journey, and by the wild relief in Ernie's eyes, he knew that he was not the only one.

Even when he had broken into the Department of Mysteries with Harry, Neville had never felt this on edge. Then, for all the fear, it had been easy simply to trust that Harry knew best, and by the time that was proven to be terribly wrong, they were in a fight for their lives. The strange thing was, he couldn't decide if he hated the sensation or loved it, this hyper-extended world where every breath seemed to have weight, every moment a palpable potential for so much to go right or unspeakably wrong.

Standing, he switched his wand to his left hand so that his handwriting would not be recognized, then pointed it at the stone wall directly above the Headmaster's chair. Flagrate, he thought, and a jet of orange light shot out of the end of his wand, shockingly vivid in the near-total darkness. At almost the same moment, Ernie did the same, aiming a few feet lower. Slowly, the fiery jets traced a path along the stones, leaving letters in their wake that burned like embedded embers, spelling out first letters, then words.

Long Live Harry Potter Remember Cedric Diggory

At last, their task was done, and they stood back. Their mouths were completely hidden, but he could see the grin in Ernie's eyes and knew it was mirrored in his own as they admired their handiwork.

Emblazoned above Snape's ill-gotten seat of power for all to see were a mere seven words that they knew would be more than enough to cause a reaction in everyone who would fill the Hall in only a few hours.

Then the smile froze on Neville's face, and his heart seemed to stop, the blood turning to ice in his veins as a sound echoed through the still night air like the crash of a gallows' trap door. The slow, deliberate, mocking clap of hands.

Once, twice, three, four times. His hand squeezed the Galleon in the pocket of his robes, and as it began to burn, he released it. All over the school now, he knew, the rest of the D.A. would feel the heat of the coin and know that the worst had happened. They had been caught, and all he could do now was buy time, time for his friends and comrades to flee, to get to their common rooms and dormitories, to restore color to robes, change into pajamas, pretend to be sleeping in harmless innocence.

Slowly, he turned, Ernie doing the same, and it was with a horrible absence of surprise that he saw the dark figure standing in the aisle that ran up the center of the room, a smirk twisted into his thin face as he held them at wandpoint. "Out for a little evening vandalism, are we?" Snape asked mockingly.

"Hex yourself!" Ernie spat, the fury and hate in his voice clear even through the distortion of the twins' invention.

Casually, Snape flicked his wand, and they found themselves suddenly under a harsh, spotlit glare. Neville drew back, raising his hand involuntarily to shield his eyes as spots burst and danced in his vision. From somewhere beyond the blinding whiteness, Snape laughed coldly. "Neville Longbottom, I see. Your little costumes are quite effective. I can't say I recognize your friend, but I would know that flinch and cower anywhere."

Fury made the wavering green spots seem to glow red, but Ernie was the first to react, his movements a blur as he jerked his wand towards the center of the light. "Imped—"

The spell was cut off half-formed as a jet of red light struck the Hufflepuff directly in the chest, and he fell backwards, unconscious before he hit the ground.

Neville dove, taking advantage of the split-second opportunity to throw himself to cover behind the tall, heavy wooden shield of the Headmaster's chair. He didn't care what happened to him, but he knew that the longer he kept Snape there, the more chance the others had to escape. Still, he knew he had bought himself seconds at the most. Snape was only toying with him, and could toss away his feeble shelter with the merest twitch of his wand whenever he felt like it.

Desperately, Neville's mind raced through every spell he knew, searching in vain for something that could get him out of this, then suddenly, he noticed a tiny black envelope with silver lettering resting in the open fingers of Ernie's limp hand. As he recognized it, a plan came to him, reckless and half-formed, but all he had. Quickly, he spat the gum into the palm of his hand and pointed his wand at it. "Waddiwassi!"

The little yellow wad shot into the air and flew over the table, and Neville did not waste the time to look as he heard Snape's roar of outrage as the gum shot with violent precision directly up his left nostril. Barely a second later, he shouted, "Expulso!" but Neville didn't care. He had lunged, and now the little packet was in his hand, and in a single motion he tore it open and scattered the contents into the air.

The Great Hall was instantly plunged into utter, inky darkness.

For a moment, there was silence, then Snape's voice rang out, seeming to come from everywhere at once. It didn't just echo or reverberate, it issued directly from the floor beneath him, from the chair against his shoulder, as though the entire Hall were one immense wireless set. "Poor Neville. Always so very close, but always some simple, fatal flaw. Counter-clockwise instead of clockwise. Ten scoops of beetle eyes instead of a tenth of a scoop. Attempting to slip a potion to the Potions Master of fourteen years."

Neville bit his lip, letting his head slump in frustration. The awful truth was that Snape was right. He had been a fool to try and drug his old Potions teacher, and twice a fool to simply accept Dobby's word that they were all sleeping without checking himself, assuring himself that they weren't going to be undone by something as easy as pretending to be asleep. He wanted to try and answer, to defend himself, but he caught himself at the last moment.

No, no more childish errors. He says he recognized how you flinched, but he doesn't know for sure it's you, does he? That's why he's baiting you, because if you get away, he still won't know for sure who it was. He's waiting for you to say something—to defend yourself or to try and defend your friend—because he'd assume something like this would be done by Gryffindor.

He started to edge towards where he thought Ernie lay in the blindness. If he could Ennervate him and they could find a way to get past Snape while the darkness held ...

An incredibly loud groaning and scraping, as if from ten thousand old doors being forced open at once, stopped him cold, and he covered his ears against the awful, spine-shivering noise. Bizarre imaginings of what Snape had done reeled after one another, the most vivid among them the recollection of Professor Flitwick making a table do a jig in Charms. Was he about to be pummeled to death by furniture?

"Not so quickly. I can hear you moving, but you may wish to reconsider it." Once again, the voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, making it impossible to know where his nemesis was. His heart hammered with the wild certainty that Snape was behind him, right behind him, about to reach down and—no. He closed his eyes, taking a long, deep breath to snuff the burgeoning panic. It made the dark better somehow to shut his eyes, creating the illusion that something would be there if he opened them.

Snape's tone was casually superior, as if he were simply in class again, informing them all of the ingredients and procedures for a potion he considered particularly elementary. "The tables and chairs in the Great Hall are extremely adaptable to the will of the Headmaster. You're a mouse, Longbottom, a mouse among lions, and you've set your own trap. You no longer know where anything is in here, not even me, not even really, I would venture, yourself. You're disoriented, uncertain, hunted. And if you touch anything now—if you so much as brush the hem of your cloak or the tip of one finger against the edge of a table—you will find it's a very ... sticky situation."

His hand tightened on his wand. He was trapped. He wanted to jump to his feet, start firing off the worst hexes and jinxes he knew, go down fighting, but he held himself back. This was cat and mouse, but, Neville thought with a grim smile, this mouse has a few tricks up his sleeve. You think you can hear me? Not anymore. Concentrating hard, he waved his wand. Muffliato!

"Potter!" Snape's voice was harsh with shock, but he quickly recovered. "So, you've come back. Taken a page from Barty Crouch, have you? I commend you. Neville was an inspired choice. But you've given yourself away. Didn't I tell you never to use my own spells against me?"

Neville had no idea what Snape was talking about, but it didn't matter. If Snape thought he was Harry under Polyjuice potion, so be it. He had to get out, and he would worry about that later. With another flick of his wand, he thought Proximitus! The wand began to vibrate in his hand, and he extended it cautiously, feeling as the vibration increased, became faster, harder as he approached something. It didn't matter what it was, touching it would mean he would be stuck there until the Peruvian Darkness Powder wore off, and he backed slowly away, using the wand to replace his eyes as he got carefully to his feet and began to move in tiny, hesitant steps towards what he hoped was the doors. If he could just get beyond the reach of the darkness... but he didn't know how far it extended, it would be so easy to wind up stuck in a corner, trapped in a dead end of tables and chairs ...

For a single regretful moment, he thought of Ernie, stunned and helpless, but he forced himself to dismiss the other boy from his thoughts. Ernie knew the risks. Better one of them escape. He took another step, sweeping the wand back and forth in front of him like a blind man, feeling the subtle changes in vibration ...

Then another voice rang out, distorted and inhuman. "Stupefy!" The red light was swallowed invisibly, but Neville could hear the spell sizzle the air, and he braced himself for the impact, for the nothingness, but there was only the muffled thud of a body hitting the floor, and then the voice again. "Aeolum!"

With the whistling howl of a winter storm, a gale blew through the room, nearly knocking Neville off his feet with its force. The hood was ripped from his head, and he felt his robes snap and ripple as he turned, curling his back to it, his hands clutching the scarf to keep it from being yanked from his face. His eyes were still closed tightly, but as the wind died down, he became aware of an indefinable difference to the quality of the darkness through the lids, and when he opened them, he found that he could see again.

The powder had been dissipated by the magical windstorm, and two figures were standing by the doors, black-robed and hooded, their faces swathed and their wands raised. Relief swelled in Neville's chest at the sight of his fellow D.A. members, even as he felt a twinge of frustration that they had disobeyed his orders. They started forward towards the dizzyingly complex maze of chairs and tables that now divided the Great Hall, and he waved his arms, motioning them back. "Don't touch anything! It's charmed! You'll stick!"

Catching his bearings more completely now, Neville realized that he had barely made it a few paces from the staff table, but more chillingly still, the crumpled, black-robed form of Professor Snape lay less than ten feet away. A bitter, vindictive thrill surged through him as he pointed his own wand at the hated teacher and added his Stunning Spell to the first, smiling as the greasy-hair figure twitched at the impact.

Crossing carefully to Ernie, his robes pulled tight around him so as not to touch anything, he placed one hand restrainingly on the Lieutenant's shoulder before tapping him with the wand. "Ennervate."

Ernie's eyes blinked open, and he started to sit up, but Neville held him back. "Snape's down. We've got to move fast, but don't touch anything. Questions later. Just run." Ernie gave a nod of understanding, and he released his hold, letting the other boy to his feet.

The sprint through the jumble of furniture was like running a minefield. Tight corners, nearly impossible angles, dead ends ... and then they were trapped again. There was no way out. Neville swore. The chairs had formed an absolute barrier, and not even Luna or Dennis could have squeezed their way past without touching anything, much less two good-sized young men. He paused a moment, certain he could hear Snape breathing behind them, that he would wake at any second.

A hand grasped his shoulder, and he turned. Ernie's eyes were gleaming with the triumph of an idea, and he made a flipping motion with his hand. "Levicorpus?"

Neville nodded, bracing himself, and the next thing he knew, it felt as though he had stepped into a snare. An invisible rope tightened around his ankle, and he was jerked bodily into the air, flying up fifteen feet above the stone floor. Ernie moved his wand carefully, and Neville floated across the barrier of chairs as if dangling improbably from a broomstick, then, with a twitch of the wand, he fell. Remembering at the last possible moment what Bagman had taught them about taking a fall, he twisted in mid air, the breath driving from him in a gasp of pain as he hit the floor shoulder-first, rolling with the impact and swaying to his knees at the feet of their two rescuers.

The taller of them had already hoisted Ernie into the air with the same spell, but he was spared the pain of such an undignified landing, rather lowered gently to fall less than a foot. Neville was already standing, but his right arm was not responding correctly, and somewhere through the adrenaline, he had a suspicion that he was probably hurt, that there was pain to come in the near future, but right now, it didn't matter. Switching his wand to his uninjured left hand, he broke into a sprint.

There was no stealth now. They crashed through the doors of the Great Hall and out into the entry way, then paused. Three sets of eyes turned to him, and he made the decision instantly, gesturing to Ernie. "Down. Common room." By the light of their wands he finally recognized the protuberant, pale eyes of Luna Lovegood, and he knew that the cobalt blue of her taller companion would belong to her partner, Terry Boot. He jerked his head towards the stairs. "Your tower. Run!"

Scarcely waiting long enough to see the three of them scatter, he flew up the stairs towards Gryffindor tower, taking them three at a time. By the time he had reached the seventh floor, he was out of breath, his head reeling, but Ginny was there, dressed in Ron's oversized pajamas as she reached out for him through the portrait hole, and then he was inside and he was on the floor and someone was ripping the scarf from his face, the robes from his shoulders.

It was Seamus, and Colin was there with Neville's pajamas in his hand. His injured shoulder screamed in protest, but Neville didn't care. Without a thought for who might be in the common room or who might see, he stripped down, grabbing the pajamas and pulling them on as he followed Seamus up to their dormitory. The covers of his four-poster were already turned back, and he jumped in, yanking them up to his chin and throwing himself down on the pillow.

He was gasping for air, his heart pounding so loud he was surprised it didn't wake students in other houses, his cheeks flushed, his entire body shaking and his shoulder throbbing with deep, burning pulses, but he was laughing. The mission was a success. Snape had no idea who he had caught after all, and they had gotten away.

He had done it. They had done it. And tomorrow ... well, that was tomorrow.

Parvati's fingers were gentle as she prodded his shoulder, but it seemed to scream at the slightest touch, and Neville pulled back, screwing up his face as he hissed in protest. She rolled her eyes, swatting him on the chest. "Oh, stop it. How am I supposed to be impressed by my brave warrior's heroic injuries if he's such a baby about them?"

Neville smiled ruefully. "You're not supposed to poke them. You're supposed to look at them and make sympathetic noises."

"Sympathetic noises won't help that sprain." She took hold of his shoulder again in an iron grip, and he gasped out loud, biting back a swear word as she aimed her wand. "Now hold still, and I'll kiss it better after."

"Kiss my mouth, not my shoulder, and we have a deal," he managed through gritted teeth.

Parvati waved her wand, then tapped it against the swollen, discolored skin, but the itching sensation of healing had barely begun when there was a knock at the door. They both froze, breathless, as Seamus climbed down from where he had been sitting on the end of his bed and answered it.

To Neville's relief, but also to his confusion, it was Professor McGonagall who entered. He could count on one hand the times their Head of House had been up to visit the tower dormitory, and he felt himself flush scarlet as he realized the position he had been caught in. It did not look good to be found awake at half-five in the morning with your shirt off and a girl sitting on your lap.

Seeming to come to the same conclusion, Parvati gave a strangled little squeak and jumped to her feet, smoothing her hair and robes awkwardly. "Professor!"

McGonagall raised an eyebrow, but did not appear in the least bit scandalized. If anything, she seemed a bit annoyed as she swept into the room and crossed to the window seat where Neville sat. "Settle down, girl. These rooms have more charms on them than Gringotts. If you'd been doing anything untoward, I'd know well enough. Still—" She paused, and what almost seemed like a sort of smile quirked her lips. "I suppose that it does mean the rumors are true."

The idea that someone might consider him to be a worthy subject of rumor had never occurred to Neville, and he gaped at her, fighting back the surge of curiosity about the gossip that had apparently been surrounding himself and Parvati. He would ask Ginny later. It didn't seem possible, however, that McGonagall had come up just to confirm schoolyard tales, and his brows drew together in curiosity. "Professor?"

She did not look at him directly, but rather past him, out the window and over the Hogwarts grounds, where the first blue light of dawn was just beginning to show, and her voice was deliberately, even excessively casual when she spoke. "Argus Filch came to see me this morning at just past four. I do not like to be awakened so early, and even less so when it is to tell me my classroom has been vandalized. Apparently, someone had carved the names 'Ronald Weasley' and 'Justin Finch-Fletchley' rather deeply into the walls. Nor was mine the only classroom so affected."

Neville tried to force an expression of innocent shock onto his face. "Really?!"

Her gaze remained steady through the window. "Indeed. Each and every one, and the Great Hall besides, and all with the names of students who are not with us this year. Professor Snape claims he came very close to catching the culprits last night, and he says he has his suspicions of who is at fault. He plans to do something about it later today."

"And do you know what he's going to do to them?" Neville tried in vain to keep his voice as casual as hers.

"I do not think it will be very pleasant, but the specifics, no." Now she did look down, seeming to notice his state of undress for the first time. He reached for his pajama top, suddenly self- conscious, but the movement caught his injured shoulder, and he stopped, grabbing at it instinctively with his other hand. She watched him silently, and he felt utterly exposed under that flinty stare. "Have you lost some weight, Mr. Longbottom?"

The question baffled him a moment, and he looked down at himself, then up at her again. "A few pounds, I guess ... not much."

"The quality of our food remains excellent, so I would assume you have taken up some sort of strenuous extra-curricular activity. Perhaps the kind that would also have injured your shoulder? Are you considering going out for Quidditch? I have never understood why so many students feel they must prepare for that in secret." Neville's eyes widened. She's offering me an alibi!

He nodded quickly. "Um ... yeah."

"I will be sure to make a note of it. And Miss Patil—"

Parvati's voice was unnaturally high-pitched, and she had blushed from her collar to her hairline. "Yes, Professor?"

"I hope you understand that if Professor Snape questions me about Mr. Longbottom's whereabouts in the early hours of this morning, I will not be able to protect your reputation."

With an immense sigh of relief, Parvati nodded, smiling as her eyes shone with understanding. "Of course, Professor."

"Very well." Professor McGonagall swept her long robes around her and crossed back to the door, but at the last moment, she stopped. As she turned back, Neville caught the briefest glimpse of what she must have looked like as a very young girl as she cast them a rare, mischievous smile. "One last thing. The next time you're planning an adventure, please inform whichever of your little friends is appropriate that Mr. Finch-Fletchley hyphenates his name. I had to correct that myself."

By the time they went to breakfast, Neville's shoulder was healed well enough that he could sling his schoolbag over it with only a slight wince, but there was still a vivid yellow and green discoloration to the skin beneath his robes, and they had decided it was best to leave it that way in light of Professor

McGonagall's suggestion. None of the Gryffindors in the D.A. had been able to sleep properly, and he noticed a lot of dark circles and growling stomachs as they made their way downstairs.

As the crowd grew thicker and it became clear that the students were buzzing with the excited hum of officially-suppressed news, he caught Ginny's eye, and she grinned at him. He grinned back. Whatever was waiting for him from Snape, it would definitely be worth it. The feeling of despair that had been settling over the school had vanished like a fleeting morning mist, and in its place, they seemed to have charged the very air itself with hope and defiance. All around him, the names were being murmured, but he stopped short as he heard his own name muttered in the same breath as Harry's from a Gryffindor first-year.

The child glanced up at him as she noticed, and Neville saw to his surprise the same worshipful look that he was accustomed to seeing the likes of the Creevey brothers give to Harry. As he looked around, he caught half a dozen more of the same, and not just from young Gryffindors, but from older students who weren't even in the D.A.. The Slytherins, however, were regarding him with expressions of open hate, and Blaise Zabini bumped into him rather too hard for accident, deliberately ignoring the collision, but raising his voice so that Neville clearly heard "—know we aren't responsible for such childish prank. Some people understand the value of keeping their skins intact."

It seemed that somehow, the insightful spotlight of gossip had picked him out as having had something to do with it all, and the familiar desire to duck his head and blush fought with his new instincts as a leader, and he settled for something in the middle, raising his head proudly and continuing into the Great Hall with his cheeks burning.

The moment he crossed the threshold, however, his heart stopped, and all color drained from his face. All around him, as though a Silencing Charm had been cast, conversations were trailing to a halt, and only the Slytherins seemed able to continue talking as they took their places at the tables and chairs which, he noticed vaguely, had been restored to their customary places.

Snape sat in the Headmaster's chair as they had all come to expect, his black robes spread around him, his face looking even more sallow in the golden light of the autumn morning, but there was a horrible smile on his thin lips. On the wall behind him, a newly-hung Hogwarts banner looked awkward and out of place, the fiery letters still half-visible through the thick tapestry, but that was the source of the scowls on the faces of the Carrows and the downright murderous look on Filch's cadaverous face. The source of Snape's smile stood on either side of his chair.

Luna Lovegood and Hannah Abbott.

The two girls stood at rigid attention, still in their nightgowns, gagged and immobilized by thin, magical silver ropes to a pair of gleaming stakes that had been sunk deep into the stone. They looked horribly like the etchings of witch burnings from their History textbooks, only a pile of kindling at their feet needed to complete the image. Luna seemed completely unaffected by her situation, even on the verge of dozing off, but Hannah was terrified; her eyes huge, her cheeks gleaming with tears.

You sick bastard, Neville thought fiercely, you know it was two boys, no matter what, you know it wasn't... Then across the long room, Neville's eyes met Snape's black gaze, and he knew. If Snape had taken his victims from Gryffindor, the surprise would have been lost, but in all the rest of the school, he could have chosen no two people who would have torn into Neville's heart as deeply, no two dearer friends. Now, he would have to watch them suffer punishment he knew to be his, or come forward freely, and either way, Snape would have won. It was checkmate.

Ginny grabbed the sleeve of his robes, and Neville felt himself pulled down onto the bench, shaking in helpless anger as they all took their seats. He tried to catch McGonagall's eye, but she too appeared to be holding back more anger than he had ever seen in her, clutching her wand in her fist as she stared down at her plate as though vividly imagining Snape transfigured into something small, writhing, and very stabbable.

Food appeared in front of them, but no one moved towards it, waiting breathlessly as Snape got slowly to his feet, leaning forward and spreading his hands on the staff table as he looked out over them.

"Last night," his words echoed through the silence as though he had used a Sonorus Spell, "I caught two students in this Hall committing a most ill-advised act of vandalism. They managed to escape, but they have been apprehended since."

He turned towards Hannah, and she began to struggle wildly against her bonds, a thin trickle of blood appearing on her chin as the fragile skin of her lips split under the chafing of the gag. Snape was utterly unmoved by her terror. If anything, it seemed to feed his overall attitude of satisfaction as he continued. "Miss Lovegood and Miss Abbott will be demonstrating for all of you the extreme foolishness of such actions. The Cruciatus Curse would not seem to have been enough of a deterrent, but the Carrows assure me that they have many other means of enforcing discipline which they are eager to show you."

The two squat siblings stood, tiny eyes shining with malice in their pale, doughy faces as they pushed up the sleeves of their robes and approached the bound girls, wands in hand. Alecto reached Luna first and stood only inches behind her, leaning forward and running her wand along the white cheek like a lover's caress. Their eyes met, and something in Alecto's gaze made Luna scream.

It was the final straw. Never, in all their time as friends, had he ever seen Luna Lovegood frightened. Even when they had faced certain death in the Ministry, she had been like a rock to them. No matter what she wore or what strange things she believed in, he could always count on her to face the worst with a calm detachment that made it easier for everyone around her to find their own bravery. Now she was screaming, screaming silently beneath the gag, her blue eyes impossibly huge and pleading.

Neville stood.

"No!" Parvati was yanking at his robes now, pleading with him to sit back down, but it was too late, and he would not have taken it back if he could. He shook her off and stepped into the aisle, pulling himself up to his full height as he stared unflinchingly at the man he hated more than anything else in the world. Triumph gleamed in Snape's eyes, but he did not care as he began to walk forward. He knew that the Fidelius Charm would prevent him from being able to betray the D.A., but it would not prevent him from taking what was rightfully his.

Snape tilted his head, one eyebrow raising in mock surprise. "Mr. Longbottom? Do you object to my authority as Headmaster of this school to punish troublemakers?"

"They didn't do it."

"And do you know," he sneered, "who did?"

Neville took a deep breath. "Take me. Punish me instead."

"Very noble, but there were two." Snape turned back to the Carrows, who were all but drooling over their would-be victims; human attack dogs on the thinnest of leashes. He raised his hand, but stopped as a second voice called out.

"Then take me as well. I shall be the other." Neville felt a swell of pride as Ernie Macmillan rose to his feet and joined him in the aisle.

There was a long, torturous pause, and Neville wondered suddenly if this was the punishment. To draw them out, make them admit themselves, and then go ahead and brutalize the girls anyway. Then Snape gave a wave of his wand, and the Carrows were unceremoniously pushed back from their victims. The silver bonds and stakes faded like smoke, and Hannah broke away instantly, flinging herself into Professor Sprout's open arms as she burst into tears of relief.

To everyone's surprise, Luna did not move so quickly. For a long moment, she stood there, staring at Alecto, and then she spoke, her dreamy voice unusually clear. "I do not think," she said simply, "you are a very nice person, even on the inside." Then, with a toss of her head, she joined the Ravenclaw table as though nothing had happened, reaching for a slice of toast and beginning to spread tomato sauce on it before Alecto had even finished processing what she had said.

Now Ernie and Neville stood alone, and he could feel every eye in the school upon them as Snape crossed his arms and tapped the end of his wand against his chin. "Ah, yes. The brave, chivalrous Gryffindor and the strong, loyal Hufflepuff. You must feel so proud, flinging yourselves into harm's way to save the fair maidens from a fate worse than death. But, if you are determined to make examples of yourselves, I can accommodate you."

Snape gave a twitch of his wand, and thick iron chains burst like snakes from the wall behind him, shooting forward to clamp around their wrists and ankles before either boy had a chance to react.

Neville dug in his heels, struggling with all his strength, but it was utterly useless as the chains began to retract, dragging him forward until he was pressed against the cold wall beneath the words they had carved the night before. His face twisted, and he started to speak, but before the words could leave his lips, a gag had tightened around his mouth, all but choking him.

"You will remain there," Snape said smoothly, "without food or water until the damage has faded. I believe you will find that it was done quite thoroughly. It should take two or three days at least before the last has gone." Neville could hear the chains rattling as Ernie fought against his own restraints, and then he gasped beneath the gag as a sharp, burning sensation like the blade of a hot dagger ran swiftly down his back, and he was stripped naked to the waist, his torn clothing falling in a heap at his feet.

Somewhere behind him, there were muffled sobs as a few of the younger students began to cry. Then there were gasps, a few moans, and Snape's voice again. "Mr. Filch, I believe you have waited for this for a very long time."

The gag vanished, and Neville turned his head with difficulty, his cheek scraping against the rough stone as he caught Ernie's eyes in a silent pact. Then he closed his eyes, clenching his teeth and opening his hands to brace his palms against the wall.

There was a swish, a crack, a slap. Once. Twice. Three times. Again and again. A dozen times now. Two dozen. Three. Forty times in all. More were crying, older students now, and a few of the little ones were in complete hysterics. Then again. Once. Twice. Forty again.

Neither boy made a sound.


End file.
